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Richard A. Wright: Department of Criminology, Sociology, Social Work, and Geography, Arkansas State University, Arkansas, and
J. Mitchell Miller: College of Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The authors wish to thank Victor E. Kappeler for his help with the research for this paper, Geoffrey P. Alpert and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft, and Judy Lestansky for her editorial assistance.
In the last few years, numerous studies have assessed the relative prestige of both journals and individual scholars in the general criminology and criminal justice literature (Cohn and Farrington, 1990, 1994a, 1994b, 1996; Regoli et al., 1982; Stack, 1987; Williams et al., 1995; Wright, 1995; Wright and Cohn, 1996; Wright and Soma, 1996). Wright and his associates recently have extended this analysis to the study of the most-cited scholars and works in several research specialties, including critical criminology (Wright and Friedrichs, forthcoming), criminological theory (Wright and Rourke, forthcoming), and women and crime studies (Wright and Sheridan, forthcoming). To date, however, no study has examined the citation patterns in specific research areas relating to the criminal justice system: the police, courts, and corrections. By focusing on police studies, our paper begins the process of extending citation analysis to specialized research on criminal justice subsystems.
Through an analysis of 370 articles and research notes appearing in the area of police studies published in Criminology, Justice Quarterly, and four academic periodicals devoted to policing (American Journal of Police, Police Forum, Police Studies, and Policing and Society: An International Journal of Research and Policy) from 1991 to 1995, we report the 50 most-cited scholars and the 36 most-cited works[1]. Our lists of the most-cited scholars and works in police studies are compared to similar findings taken from general criminology and criminal justice publications. We conclude with some thoughts about the importance of extending citation analysis to police studies in particular, and to criminal justice specialty areas in general.
Existing research
Studies of the most-cited scholars and works in criminology can be traced to Wolfgang, Figlio, and Thornberry's (1978) Evaluating Criminology, a landmark examination of the citation patterns in all known journal articles and research books published in criminology and criminal justice from 1945 to 1972. Because Wolfgang et al. (1978)...