"Prosecution in the eyes of the justice-involved: A community-based participatory research approach" (by Belen Lowrey-Kinberg): Review 3

Vote: Publish pending minor changes.

This is a well-executed paper that offers a valuable contributions to the field, particularly in exploring community-based participatory research with justice-involved individuals. The author has effectively combined empirical findings with a reflection on the CBPR methodology. However, I think that a few minor revisions are necessary to enhance the clarity and specificity of the paper:

• The manuscript provides a useful overview of CBPR. Nevertheless, it would benefit from a brief discussion clarifying whether CBPR is distinct from or a subset of action research, as some readers may be more familiar with the latter term. This addition would provide further context and aid readers in understanding the nuances of CBPR in relation to established research approaches.

• The section on attrition rates currently addresses the general issue of attrition in focus group research. To strengthen this section, it should specifically focus on the challenges associated with attrition in CBPR studies involving justice-involved individuals. By doing so, the paper will better highlight the unique aspects of CBPR and its implications for research with this population.

• It would be beneficial to briefly address how themes from the focus groups informed the development of the interview guide for the study with prosecutors. This addition could either be incorporated into the methodology section or discussed in the relevant section on interview questions, providing a clearer connection between the focus group findings and subsequent research phases.

These revisions are relatively minor and should not require substantial changes to the core content or structure of the paper.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review this really interesting and well-written paper on utilizing a community based participatory research approach to researching with justice-involved people on their perceptions of the pre-trial process and ideas for future research into prosecutors priorities, practices, and career choice. I got a lot of value out of this paper, which I think does a really commendable job of reporting the central findings from the focus groups they ran and detailing some of the methodological considerations and challenges of applying a CBPR methodology in investigating with justice-involved people. Writing these kinds of papers that combine study findings with a reflection on applying a specific methodology can be tricky to pull off, but the author has done an excellent job in addressing both elements of the paper.

As a mixed methods researcher who wasn’t overly familiar with the CBPR approach, I found the author’s overview of what community based participatory research entails really valuable. One thought I did have in reading this section was that CBPR sounds a lot like action research, and I did wonder if CBPR is a newer term for action research (and a couple of the articles cited in the paper do use the term action research). Given that some researchers may be more familiar with (the term) action research than CBPR, I wondered if it might be worth very briefly explaining if there’s a difference between the two, or if CBPR represents a form of action research.

I also really valued the practical considerations section of the article as someone who hasn’t undertaken a CBPR study before. The only thing that I queried in this part of the paper was the attrition rate section, which appeared to focus on the issue of attrition rate for focus group research more broadly, as opposed to CBPR. The author might just need to reorient/reframe this section a little so that it speaks to the specific challenges of attrition in CBPR studies involving justice-involved people specifically (otherwise, a critical reader might argue that the section is only really telling us that focus group research, and focus group research with justice involved people, faces the challenge of high attrition rates). At the very end of the section, the author focuses in on the importance of crafting ongoing relationships with community members, but I think there’s probably more scope to focus on the specific challenges of attrition in CBPR studies involving justice-involved people.

In the prosecutor interview questions section, or perhaps earlier in the methodology section, it might be worth briefly noting how focus group participants were informed about how themes from the focus groups would inform the interview guide for the interview study with prosecutors.

On a very minor point, the third sentence of the abstract might follow-up more smoothly from the previous sentence if you noted explicitly that your project similarly draws on a CBPR methodology. Perhaps something like:

‘This paper reports on findings from a CBPR study that employed focus groups with justice-involved individuals to identify their perceptions of the pre-trial process, prosecutors’ priorities, and recommended directions for research.’

Minor typos/expression-related errors

• ‘For example, restorative justice (EFG), local residential addiction treatment programs (CFG), and drug court (HFG) were specific examples of programs that participants felt could change defendants’ lives and wanted to see expanded.’ – Should drug court be drug courts? (I’m reading this from an Australian context, so it might be in the singular, but worth double checking).

• Another really minor point: I believe that Carl Marx should be Karl Marx.