Criminology, Law & Society Writing Guide

• Writing Guide Home
• Writing Academic Papers
  • » Identifying an Issue
  • » Choosing Academic Sources
  • » Organizing Your Paper
  • » Citing Sources
  • » Direct Quote from a Source
  • » Paraphrase of a Source
  • » Summary of a Source
  • » Citing Websites
  • » Citing Statutes and Legal Cases in APA
  • » Paragraph Structure and Voice
  • » References
• The Kinds of Papers You Will Write in Criminology, Law, & Society
• In-Class Writing
• What Your Professors Say
• Grading Rubrics
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• Checklist for Writing Assignments
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Citing Direct Sources

Direct quotations should be used sparingly. Although useful at times, you should always try to put the work of others in your own words while citing the source. If you must, there are a number of ways to integrate quotes. Consider this passage:

Various factors have undermined the traditional relationship between criminologists and criminal justice policy. These challenges can be divided into factors that are external to criminology and those that are internal to the field. External factors, such as a public shift towards neo-conservatism, graphic representations of crime in the media, and the increased use of capture, monitor and detect technologies (Haggerty, 2004) have altered the way in which policymakers saw criminological expertise as useful. At the same time, internal factors within criminology gave rise to a host of critical criminologies that while advancing and democratizing criminological theory, advocated systemic reform in ways that were often unpalatable to institutions and governments. Together, these challenges have limited the role of the academic in the development and delivery of criminal justice policy.

Passage from: Page 313 of Wheeldon, J & Heidt, J. 2007 "Bridging the Gap: A Pragmatic Approach to Understanding Critical Criminologies and Policy Influence." Critical Criminology, Volume 15, Number 4 / December, 2007 (Pages 313-325)

One approach is to integrate quotes as smoothly as you can into your own writing and use ellipses (…) to show where you have condensed the quote.

Some have argued that justice policy in the US has become harsher since the 1970s (Garland, 2001). This may be because, according to Wheeldon and Heidt (2007: 313), a variety of factors have '…limited the role of the academic in the development and delivery of criminal justice policy.'

If you quote more than 40 words, set this text of by indenting 10 spaces from the left margin. Don't change the right margin and don't use quotation marks. Keep the lines double spaced, but instead of putting the period after the parenthetical notation, place it before.

At the same time, internal factors within criminology gave rise to a host of critical criminologies that while advancing and democratizing criminological theory, advocated systemic reform in ways that were often unpalatable to institutions and governments. Together, these challenges have limited the role of the academic in the development and delivery of criminal justice policy. (Wheeldon & Heidt, 2007: 313)