Last year, a NZ Herald article reported that a High Court Judge could find no evidence to support the claim that longer sentencing laws deterred crime (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12114534). The Judge issued a challenge to Crown lawyers to provide him with any evidence to the contrary, which they failed to do. The Crown doesn’t want to be caught out like this again, and would like some further research conducted on the theory of deterrence.You have been given the task of designing a quantitative research project to test the effects of longer sentencing on offending rates. As part of this you must identify your hypothesis and state how you would test your hypothesis using a quantitative approach (ie. big data, surveys, and/or experiments). You must justify your choice of data, your chosen data collection process, and the steps you intend to take in your analysis. You may conclude with what you expect your results to show and how you intend to control for biases and manage constraints.
