Students’ Perceptions of a Cohort-style Graduate Program: A Descriptive Analysis of Feedback Obtained from MACJA Graduates

Prior research on cohort-based graduate programs reported positive experiences from both students and faculty. Themes such as cohesiveness, peer support, and the development of professional relationships were common among participants’ responses. The current study focuses on feedback obtained from 180 graduate students who completed a cohort-style/weekend-based master’s program in criminal justice administration (MACJA) at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Since the MACJA program’s 2006 inception, entry and exit surveys have been administered to the students to evaluate the program environment and learning outcomes. The results of these questionnaires will be examined in the context of the cohort-based design, and sample responses of open-ended items will be discussed.     

Community College Students With Criminal Justice Histories and Human Services Education: Glass Ceiling,Brick Wall,or a Pathway to Success

In spite of open access to community college education, specifically human service associate degree programs, students with criminal justice histories do not necessarily have an unobstructed pathway to obtaining the degree and admission to the baccalaureate programs in human services and social work that are almost always selective. The first obstacle may arise when a student must be placed in the field internship. This may mark the first time in a student’s educational career where he or she must disclose his or her ex-offender status. While higher education plays a well-documented role against recidivism, students who are ex-offenders who are enrolled in community college programs and also have their sights set on transfer, professional credentialing, and professional employment, may face similar barriers. There is a paucity of research related to students in community college with criminal justice histories and a clear need for qualitative and quantitative study in the area. The author calls for more active advocacy and community education roles for community college professionals in this arena as well.     

How Will They Understand if We Don’t Teach Them? The Status of Criminal Justice Education on Gay and Lesbian Issues

Inclusion of race and gender in criminal justice education has, to some degree, been prompted as a result of perceived bias by criminal justice system professionals. Utilizing the race and gender experience as a template, interactions between the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) community and the criminal justice system are explored. This study surveyed criminal justice undergraduate degree programs to ascertain course content on gay and lesbian issues. Results indicate that an extremely small number of programs have such a course or alternatively incorporate GLBT issues within existing race and gender courses. Implications for criminal justice education are discussed.     

PhD Program Prestige and Faculty Location in Criminal Justice and Sociology Programs

Criminal justice education is striving to become completely integrated into the academic community and in the process has assumed many of the characteristics of the more established disciplines. Prestigious academic programs hiring PhDs from other prestigious programs has been a familiar pattern for many established academic programs. The initiative to maximize program prestige by hiring PhDs from high-ranking programs is thought to benefit both program and individuals. This study examined the sources of PhD degrees among prestigious and less prestigious programs in criminal justice and compared the results to those found for sociology. Taking into account the multidisciplinary nature of criminal justice and its faculties, among ranked criminal justice programs, a tendency for highly ranked programs to hire PhDs from other highly ranked programs was observed although not as strongly as that found in sociology. Some questions for criminal justice education raised by this pattern were identified.     

Distance learning for criminal justice professionals in the United Kingdom: Development,quality assurance and pedagogical proprieties

Education for criminal justice professionals in the UK (particularly for the police) was a long time coming. The deep resistance to such notions shown by individual officers, to say nothing of antipathy from the Police Federation (a quasi police union) only started to dissipate in the wake of critical research (and criticism of police ‘research’) in the mid-1980s. Early efforts at such education concentrated on delivery using traditional classroom-based teaching. However, by the early 1990s the inadequacies of such delivery were identified, and full undergraduate programs were developed using distance learning (DL) technology. This paper examines, in the context of 10 years of experience in developing and managing high-quality DL programs for a wide range of criminal justice professionals, the key features of development, design and delivery of such programs in the UK, which extend well beyond Internet/WWW delivery. The article also describes and considers the impact and expectations of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), which seeks to monitor and assess the delivery of higher education in the UK, and examines the positive pedagogical outcomes that can, for CJ professionals, follow DL study.     

Continuity and discontinuity in competing models of criminal justice education: Evidence from illinois

Competing models of criminal justice education have been conceptualized to exist for many years. Relevant empirical data to support this notion can be identified in the literature, especially data derived from early surveys of criminal justice educators and content analyses of criminal justice curricula as found across institutions of higher education. Using contemporary survey data from criminal justice faculty members in the state of Illinois, the authors attempt to assess whether the evolution of criminal justice education has resulted in contemporary demarcations and models of criminal justice education that differ from those identified in the earlier literature. The survey data suggest strong patterns, some of which differ from those identified previously. Four models of criminal justice education emerging from the data are discussed, and their implications for criminal justice education are highlighted.     

Goals,Expectations, and Satisfaction of Criminal Justice Majors: Implications for Faculty,Students, and Programs*

Students majoring in criminal justice present an “embarrassment of riches” for academic programs, so little attention has been given to these students and their perspectives on criminal justice programs. However, the assessment movement in higher education and the ACJS encourage self‐examination and program improvement. Further, student satisfaction has been recognized as an important element in the discussion of school and program quality and effectiveness. The present paper presents data from an outcome survey of graduating seniors from a Midwestern public university, with a focus on the reasons why students chose the major, career plans upon graduation, and program satisfaction. The paper explores possible predictors of these variables and discusses the implications of these results for criminal justice faculty, students, and programs.     

Celebrating 100 Years of Criminal Justice Education, 1916–2016

Berkeley Police Chief August Vollmer, in coordination with the University of California, created a baccalaureate degree granting program for his police officers in the summer of 1916. The program was titled Criminology and consisted of courses on police practices, criminal law, and many of the natural science classes including biology, chemistry, and toxicology. This program continued through the summer of 1932, when a university-wide program was developed and overseen by then Professor August Vollmer. The summer program, begun in 1916, developed into both the modern criminology and criminal justice programs of today. The purpose of this paper is to recognize the development of criminal justice education which marks its 100th anniversary in the summer of 2016.     

The State of Criminal Justice Educational Programs in the United States: Bachelors’ Degrees,Curriculum Standards,and the Ongoing Quest for Quality

While definitions for, and assessments of, the quality of degree programs in higher education are varied, in criminal justice the field has determined a quality program is one that meets certain standards involving such areas as program mission, curriculum, faculty credentials, and resources determined through “academic certification” by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS).The problem is few programs have pursued certification and almost no research has otherwise assessed degree program quality. Using data collected from the population of bachelor’s degree programs in criminal justice (BCJ) operating during 2015–2016 (N = 670), this study assessed program curriculum using ACJS standards, and examined institutional, departmental, and programmatic influences on the number of standards met. Results indicated BCJ programs met few curriculum standards, and that departmental factors were especially significant influences on the number of standards met. These results warrant revisiting accreditation as the mechanism for insuring the quality of criminal justice academic programs.     

A commitment to justice at a jesuit university: A comparison of criminal justice majors to non-majors

While both criminal justice programs and Jesuit institutions claim commitment to the realization of justice, their conceptions of justice differ. This exploratory survey of 31 criminal justice majors and 51 non-majors compares criminal justice majors' concept of justice with that of non-criminal justice majors. We find that criminal justice majors and non-majors generally do not differ in their views of justice or their rank of goals for specific criminal justice professionals, regardless of the number of theology/philosophy or criminal justice courses taken or other demographic factors.     

Developing an online justice studies degree program: A case study

Online technology allows higher education to reach additional students. Because of its convenience many universities will offer a variety of criminology and criminal justice courses online. This paper presents a case study of the transfer of a graduate justice studies degree program from traditional instruction to online delivery. The transformation must involve the coordination of several university departments. Online course instruction includes development, instruction, and assessment stages that are distinct from traditional courses. The lessons learned from this process are discussed.     

Causes of Wrongful Conviction: Looking at Student Knowledge

The current study investigates the impact of a criminal justice education on student knowledge about wrongful conviction. Past research has found fallibility of hard evidence (e.g., eyewitness misidentification), police and lawyer behaviors (e.g., tunnel vision), and social group discrimination to be underlying causes of wrongful conviction. We developed a survey to investigate student knowledge of these underlying causes, comparing participants in different years and programs of study. The findings suggest that criminal justice majors were at times more aware of the underlying causes of wrongful conviction than noncriminal justice majors, specifically in regards to the fallibility of hard evidence and social group discrimination. Criminal justice majors were not more knowledgeable in the areas of police and lawyer behavior. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the scope of criminal justice education and future careers in criminal justice.     

Liberal education and the criminal justice major

New perspectives on the impact of college on students, on linking general education, the major, electives and extra-classroom experiences toward the goal of “integrated learning,” and renewed emphasis on the importance of producing liberally educated college graduates, present opportunities for criminal justice educators to make their field a keystone in the architecture of a liberal education. In this essay, I argue that the multidisciplinary perspectives that characterize the field of criminal justice, as well as its core intellectual concerns, make criminal justice well-suited to serve as the infrastructure for a high-quality undergraduate liberal education program.     

Freshman interest groups in criminal justice education

Freshman group programs have been promoted by many institutions of higher learning. However, few empirical evaluations of such programs have been reported in the scholarly literature, and none have focused on programs in criminal justice education. Subjects in this study included 130 students enrolled in an introductory criminal justice course at one institution, a portion of which (32 students) were also enrolled in sections of a group program called Freshman Interest Groups. Results showed that students enrolled in this program did better in the course than their freshmen peers and upper-class students, which analyses showed was largely due to higher attendance.     

Teaching Cybersecurity to Criminal Justice Majors

Responses to breaches in cybersecurity are increasingly reliant on criminal justice practitioners. However, while the demand for criminal justice participation in cybersecurity increases daily, most universities are lagging in their educational and training opportunities for students entering criminal justice agencies. This paper discusses the need for cybersecurity programs in criminal justice, and examines how the evolution of this “new crime” has become an issue for criminal justice professionals in addition to computer science experts. A review of existing cybersecurity programs in Texas suggests that most four-year universities have yet to develop courses/programs in criminal justice. Course recommendations, sample syllabi for cybersecurity courses in criminal justice, and recommendations for development of these programs are included.     

Why we Need Certification Standards in Criminal Justice Education and what the Impacts will be: a Response to the Concerns of JDs

In 2005 the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences approved ACJS Certification Standards for Academic Programs. This was the culmination of two decades of efforts on the part of criminal justice educators to establish minimum standards for the discipline. These standards were developed to improve the quality of criminal justice education at the associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degree levels. Section C, which establishes faculty qualifications for teaching at the various program levels, has been criticized by educators holding JDs as an effort by PhDs to push them out of the profession. The President of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences responds to specific concerns of JDs and then discusses the general impacts of the ACJS certification standards on criminal justice education.     

Integrating Gay,Lesbian, Bisexual,and Transgender Issues into the Undergraduate Criminal Justice Curriculum

Although criminal justice has made strides to incorporate issues of race, ethnicity, class, and gender into both research and teaching, the same cannot be said about issues of homosexuality. Prior research indicates criminal justice students are more homophobic than their peers in other majors and that bias against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) persons continues in the criminal justice system. As a result, this article argues that criminal justice educators should integrate issues of sexuality into criminal justice curricula as part of diversity education within the discipline. Few programs currently do so. This article outlines four methods for infusing justice‐related GLBT content into criminal justice classes, including: The teachable moment; incorporating GLBT‐relevant material in required courses; incorporating GLBT‐relevant material into diversity courses; and the development of new electives. These strategies can help combat heterosexism and homophobia.