I’m a professor (not in criminology but in sociology) but I also work in research ethics, and my mouth hit the floor reading his survey questions, posted back in thread #40.
I don’t know how this survey made it through ethical review. It’s just phrased very ‘oddly’, more as someone looking for advice or gory details rather than data, if that makes sense. The questions are really leading in a strange way. At my university, something like this would definitely not have been approved, especially for a student in their first year of a PhD with very little training, as it’s very ethically borderline.
Where I work, we have specific training in how to identify students who may be a risk to themselves or others. This is usually in relation to terrorism or cults, but I can’t imagine his research advisers didn’t notice something that they thought should be flagged up, but didn’t act quick enough in this first semester.