Courses
Note: The letter Q in the course number designates writing-intensive courses.
|
47:202:101
Crime and Crime Analysis (3)
This course examines criminal acts as events, where and when they occur, how they
occur, who is present or absent, and how they can be prevented. This is a very practical course which looks at specific types of crime
in specific settings. Discusses problem-oriented policing,
situational crime prevention, crime analysis, environmental criminology,
crime risks, and crime prevention through environmental design.
|
47:202:102
Criminology (3)
This course introduces an examination of the field of criminology. Major topics include definitions of and the basic assumptions that are used to formulate criminological theories. Causes of crime and crime rates, United States and international comparisons, and a review of the current direction of research within the study of crime are also discussed.
|
47:202:103
Introduction to Criminal Justice (3)
This course introduces the study of societal responses to crime as well as an explanation of why criminal justice should be thought of as a system. Specific topics include the study of the people and organizations that make up the criminal justice system including actors such as the police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and corrections officials. Major branches and functions of the criminal justice system including law enforcement and order maintenance, courts and sentencing, and corrections and reentry are covered.
|
47:202:104
Cutting Edge of Criminology (3)
This course features the academic research of faculty members and other active researchers and policymakers involved in the local, national, and international criminal justice scenes presenting their work to, and fielding questions from, students. Students are offered the opportunity to interact with criminal justice stakeholders and gain knowledge about cutting-edge research within the fields of criminology and criminal justice.
|
47:202:203
Police and Society (3)
The course examines the function of police in contemporary society; the problems arising between citizens and police from the enforcement and nonenforcement of laws are covered in this course. The mechanisms by which social changes impact the law enforcement and order maintenance functions of the police, interactions between the public and the police, and how these interactions impact police legitimacy are major topics that will be discussed.
|
47:202:204
Corrections (3)
This course examines and analyzes the major types of custodial and community-based criminal corrections in the United States of America. Discusses the origins, purposes, actors and actions, and consequences of the United States' corrections system and its subsystems. Specific topics include an in-depth analysis of the functions of institutional corrections like prisons and jails, as well as community corrections like probation and parole. Contemporary theories guiding corrections including retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation are discussed.
|
47:202:220
Reducing Local Crime (3)
When urban governments and quasi-governmental activities do their jobs well, they can greatly reduce various types of crime. This course relates urban design and management to crime and crime reduction. Specific topics include public violence, abandonment, littering, public drunkenness, environmental degradation, safe parks, secure streets and campuses, robberies, teen hangouts, outdoor drug markets, and more. The course is presented through the critical lens of problem-oriented policing, routine activity analysis, and situational crime prevention to reducing local crime.
|
47:202:221
Case Processing: The Law and the Courts (3)
This course explores criminal laws and judicial opinions that influence the policies, procedures, personnel, and clients of the criminal justice system in the United States. Specific topics include, but are not limited to, the origin, development, and continuing changes in criminal law, administration of criminal justice, and the criminal courts.
|
47:202:222
Constitutional Issues in Criminal Justice (3)
This course examines the practices and procedures of the United States of America through the application and critical analysis of the nation's Constitution. Particular attention is paid to how the Bill of Rights is interpreted by courtroom actors, and how this interpretation results in the setting of precedence. Discussion of how constitutional precedence reverberates in the criminal justice policy-making world, as well as specific analyses of important judicial opinions, trials, and congressional investigations are covered in this course.
|
47:202:223
Delinquency and Juvenile Justice (3)
This course explores the causes and rates of delinquent behavior. Investigates the nature and operation of the juvenile justice system, and provides comparisons between the purpose and functioning of the juvenile justice system in comparison to the adult criminal justice system. Issues of juvenile waiver to adult courts, important due process safeguards afforded to juveniles, and international comparisons are discussed.
|
47:202:224
Community Corrections (3)
This course examines the theory and practice of major community-based correctional responses (such as probation, parole, and diversion programs) to convicted criminal offenders. Discussions centering on why community corrections is an important social movement, and the countermovement to abolish the parole function, are offered in this course.
|
47:202:225
Criminal Justice: Ethical and Philosophical Foundations (3)
This course explores ethical and philosophical issues and moral dilemmas within the field of criminal justice, including principles of justice, deontology and utilitarianism, philosophical issues in sentencing, police and ethics, ethics and research, and the scope of state control.
|
47:202:301
Criminal Justice Research Methods (4)
This course develops the tools needed for conducting research and writing reports and scholarly papers in criminal justice. Students that take this course will become informed consumers of criminological research, and gain the tools to conduct their own basic research projects. Specific topics include the primacy of design, principles of reliability and validity, sampling theory, survey preparation, and the differences between, and strengths and detriments of, experimental and quasi-experimental designs.
|
47:202:302
Data Analysis in Criminal Justice (4)
This course examines the various types of data used within criminal justice and the fundamentals of statistics and analysis. Provides an analysis of the appropriate use of data, the limits of various methods, how data is collected, and how to interpret findings. Policy implications of data will also be discussed.
Prerequisites: 21:47:62:202:301 and the basic undergraduate math requirement.
|
47:202:312
Comparative Criminal Justice Systems (3)
This course provides a worldwide overview of cultural and legal traditions related to crime. This worldview is used to fuel discussions about different approaches to law enforcement, criminal procedure and criminal law, corrections, and juvenile justice across different locations and cultures.
|
47:202:313
Gender, Crime, and Justice (3)
This course provides an in-depth survey of changing social values about gender, changing criminal codes about sex crimes, changing law enforcement policies and procedures in prosecuting sex offenders, and emerging legal doctrines about privacy and sexual rights.
|
47:202:322
Business and Crime (3)
This course examines the many roles that business takes in crime, and the methods by which businesses can prevent crimes from occurring. Topics include how business plays a central role in modern society, and how this role can create criminal opportunities. How businesses engage in criminal activities, and how and why crimes are committed against business are discussed in this course.
|
47:202:323
Cybercrime (3)
This course examines the cybercrime, its prevention, and its significance for law enforcement. These types of crimes include illicit attacks on personal computers, on computer systems, on people via computers, and more. They include theft of information via computers, spreading of harmful code, and stealing credit and other information. Particular discussions about the level of technical proficiency that is used by cybercriminals are covered in this course.
|
47:202:324
Violent Crime (3)
This course provides an in-depth analysis of the relationship between violence and criminal behavior. It assesses the theoretical basis of violence by investigating its anthropological, biological, and sociological explanations and roots. Students that take this course will be involved in investigations of how and why violence occurs within the contexts of individuals, groups, and societies.
|
47:202:333
Race and Crime (3)
This course explores how race is related to offending, victimization, and various interactions with the criminal justice system. Considers how race is defined, as well as racial differences in patterns and trends. The course critically examines explanations of these racial differences.
|
47:202:342Q
Contemporary Policing (3)
This course covers various topics that are considered to be critical law enforcement problems. Specific areas of inquiry include how to police organized crime, alcohol and drugs, the policing of civil and natural disturbances, and the diffusion and multiplicity of police agencies. Discussion of issues within crime reporting by the police, assessment difficulties, and public reactions to law enforcement and order maintenance strategies used by the police are covered in this course. Administrative problems of staffing, supervision, employee morale and militancy, and public charges are also critically discussed.
|
47:202:343Q
White-Collar Crime (3)
This course focuses on crimes organized by persons whose economic, political, and privileged positions facilitate the commission; relative impunity of unusual crimes that are often national and international in scope and that have serious, long-term consequences.
|
47:202:344Q
Crime in Different Cultures (3)
This course explores crime through the critical lens of anthropology by situating criminal acts as consequences of the complexity and nuances of human interactivity and cultural heterogeneity. Crime and punishment in other societies, especially non-Western societies that lack institutional systems of criminal justice, and the social evolution of crime and crime-related institutions throughout the United States of America's history are particular topics that are discussed in this course.
|
47:202:402
Contemporary Problems in Corrections (3)
This course explores the impact of alternatives to incarceration, the growing prisoner rights movement, strikes by correctional employees, and public resentment toward persistently high rates of recidivism. In addition, the class provides for an in-depth study of issues concerning correctional education, job training, work release, and post-incarceration employment.
|
47:202:410
Environmental Criminology (3)
This course considers how the everyday environment provides opportunities for crime as well as obstacles for carrying it out. Students that take this class will be involved in discussions about important methods for reducing crime by modifying or planning the built environment. Discussions about how environmental design may produce places that make crime commission more or less opportune are covered in this class. Moreover, the course offers an alternative theory of crime based on the opportunity to carry it out.
|
47:202:411
Juvenile Gangs and Co-Offending (3)
This course explores juvenile street gangs, when they exist, when they are illusory, public reactions to them. It also considers co-offending by juveniles who are not necessarily gang members. The course considers what membership in a gang means and when gangs are cohesive or not. It examines variations among juvenile street gangs, and contrasts these with other groups of co-offenders that are sometimes called "gangs".
|
47:202:412
Organized Crime (3)
This course provides students with a historical and theoretical overview of organized crime, as well as a specific understanding of its variety. Students will gain an understanding of the structures of organized crime and the varieties of businesses associated with traditional and nontraditional organized crime groups.
|
47:202:421
Crime Mapping (3)
This course provides a practical introduction to analyzing and mapping crime and other public safety data using open-sourced and web-based applications, as well as ArcGIS geographic information system (GIS) software. Students will learn skills to make and analyze maps and will develop a solid base upon which to build further expertise in crime mapping and GIS.
|
47:202:422
Youth Violence (3)
This course focuses on the assessment, development, prevention, and treatment of youth violence among children and adolescents. Understanding and preventing youth violence is a major focus of the nation's policy agenda and involves research and practice in the mental health, public health, psychiatry, and criminal justice communities. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the course will review the biological, social, and psychological underpinnings of youth violence, and discuss how policymakers and practitioners at all levels deal with this problem.
|
47:202:423
Crime over the Life Span (3)
This course examines the development of antisocial and criminal of behavior from childhood through old age, including patterns of onset, persistence, intermittence, and desistance. What is known about why and how people start and stop committing crime at various ages, and the different types of crimes that are typically committed by people at different ages are specific topics that are covered in this course.
|
47:202:424
Mass Incarceration and Collateral Consequences (3)
This course examines trends in mass incarceration, their sources, and their direct and indirect effects on society. Since 1970, incarceration rates in the United States have quintupled and are now higher than those in any other country in the world. These huge increases in mass incarceration over a short period of time have persisted through periods when crime was rising, and even in the more recent time periods when crime has been falling. Apart from the dubious effects of mass incarceration on public safety suggested by these divergent trends, mass incarceration also has substantial collateral consequences across society, affecting families, communities, the labor market, the military, political processes, and the use of taxpayer dollars.
|
47:202:425
Miscarriages of Justice (3)
This course provides a critical and interdisciplinary examination of the current functioning of the American criminal justice system, focusing specifically on the procedures used by various criminal justice actors that can lead to errors in case processing and unjust outcomes. Students that take this course will examine policies and practices of the United States' criminal justice system (e.g., police procedure, prosecution, jury selection, scientific evidence, appellate court procedures, etc.) that unintentionally contribute to the wrongful apprehension, prosecution, conviction, incarceration, and even execution of the innocent. Moreover, we explore the collateral consequences of punishing "false positives," including implications for undermining the legitimacy of the criminal justice system and allowing impunity for culpable offenders who remain at-large.
|
47:202:466
Topics in Criminal Justice (3)
Vary per semester.
|
47:204:105
The Pursuit of Justice (3)
This
course surveys philosophies and strategies regarding structures of
justice. The class begins with a review of the differences between
retributive and distributive justice and how they are related. This
analysis leads to a broader discussion of "what justice means," both
historically and in contemporary thinking. Students are encouraged to
craft their own ideas about justice in social relations and in response
to the law.
Required course for bachelor of arts.
|
47:204:220
Inequality (3)
American
society tends to hold itself up as an arbiter of justice and equality,
domestically and globally. Upon scrutiny, however, the topic of
inequality reveals itself to be an epistemological aporia in which
starkly oppositional ideas and frameworks are all held up as social
goods, whether within American social practice, theoretical debate,
academic discourse, or lived experience. This course addresses one
central question: How is it that institutions and nations with expressed
intentions of achieving freedom, justice, fairness, and democratic
thriving often end up both exacerbating injustice and deepening
inequality?
Required course for bachelor of arts.
|
47:204:466
Topics in Justice Studies (3)
Vary per semester.
|
47:204:481Q
Senior Thesis I (3)
This
course is a research-based seminar designed for students demonstrating
the academic maturity and preparation to pursue a thesis project
independently. Students will draw on their knowledge of theory, methods,
and policy learned in core and elective courses to analyze and propose a
research plan on an important topic in criminal justice.
Required course for bachelor of arts.
|
47:204:482Q
Senior Thesis II (3)
The
senior thesis must be a substantive piece of scholarship involving
primary or secondary research, which serves to synthesize knowledge
acquired in the justice studies major over the course of the student's
undergraduate career. A senior thesis project should be an original work
that ideally makes a contribution to the discipline of justice studies.
Required course for bachelor of arts.
|
School of Criminal Justice 
