Student Perceptions of Juvenile Offender Accounts in Criminal Justice Education

In criminal justice programs, a major teaching objective is to expose students to the wide range of experiences and career paths available in criminal justice. Technological advances increase instructional strategies so that students may gain more realistic educational experience and correct erroneous perceptions about the criminal justice system. This paper describes one such strategy for online criminal justice students, a virtual prison tour, founded on the principles of social learning, experiential learning, and e-learning. In an upperclass course in juvenile delinquency, 43 students viewed a video of incarcerated juvenile offenders recounting their experiences of institutionalization, sentences, challenges, programming, and fears upon release. Student responses to seven quantitative questions and one qualitative question revealed that the video greatly impacted their attitudes, understanding, and perceptions of the juvenile justice system and provided pedagogical benefits. This strategy can be used to help criminal justice educators enhance student learning so that students experience a major aspect of the juvenile justice system.     

Competency-based education: An alternative for criminal justice education?

Over the last several years, criminal justice education In the United States has increased dramatically. Much of this growth has been in response to the needs of an evolving criminal justice field. However, there is some concern among professionals that the criminal justice system needs to be impacted more directly, and that institutions of higher learning need to be impetus for this change. To complete this task, curricula in higher education programs need to become more relevant to the needs of the system, while not ignoring the student of the educational system. This article examines the use of competency-based education (CBE) as a model that will serve the criminal justice student of today and the criminal justice system of tomorrow.     

The Coverage of American Indians and Alaskan Natives in Criminal Justice and Criminology Introductory Textbooks

This paper examines the coverage of American Indians and Alaskan Natives (AI/AN) in the most widely read introductory criminal justice and criminology books published between 2004 and 2010. The current research extends upon Young’s (J Crim Justice Educ 1:111–116, 1990) assessment of AI/ANs in criminal justice and criminology introductory textbooks, where he found no mention of AI/ANs. The replication of Young (J Crim Justice Educ 1:111–116, 1990) is especially important because AI/ANs continue to face a wide array of social issues (i.e. substance abuse and poverty), which leads to an overrepresentation of AI/ANs in the criminal justice system. To accomplish this, a content analysis was conducted on thirty-one introductory criminal justice and criminology textbooks to determine whether AI/ANs have received more academic coverage in current textbooks. The findings reveal that introductory criminal justice and criminology textbooks still under represent AI/ANs despite experiencing crime, victimization, and justice related problems.     

Teaching restorative justice: developing a restorative andragogy for face-to-face,online and hybrid course modalities

Teaching restorative justice in an academic setting is different from teaching almost any other academic course. Courses taught in the context of academic criminal justice programs tend to reinforce the structural inequalities in society, replicated and reinforced by instructor driven classroom experiences. In contrast, effective teaching of restorative justice should emulate the values of principles of restorative justice in the organization and management of the course. Teachers of restorative justice must ‘walk the talk’ and apply restorative principles and values to the design and delivery of the course itself. A conceptual framework for ‘restorative andragogy’ is developed that blends principles and values of adult learning with those of restorative justice. Four principles of this approach are identified and applied across three instructional modalities – face-to-face, online only, and hybrid courses. This approach provides a theoretically grounded model for effective teaching of restorative justice courses.     

Academic credit for life experiences in criminal justice: Issues and concerns

This article focuses on awarding credit for life experiences (work experience, training, or other forms of experiential learning) in criminal justice education. The efficacy and consequences of this practice are explored in an attempt to delimit the issues and raise relevant questions that need to be explored in developing policies for awarding such credit. The authors raise questions concerning the definition of viable and relevant experiential learning and the process of evaluating life experiences. The article also discusses the need to consider a number of factors in implementing a credit-for- experiential-learning program; for example, the implications for “in-service” versus “preservice” students, extra-university regulations, the transferability of credit to other institutions, and the importance of a careful assessment of the overall impact on the criminal justice system and on criminal justice as an academic discipline.     

Climate change: It's happening in the legal profession too

What conscientious law professor of first year, large format classes in torts, contracts, or criminal law has not pondered how to better engage students while easing their reluctance to speak out in class? While students entering law schools are quite adept with student engagement technologies (SETs) from undergraduate classes, some law faculties seem tied to the passive environment of lectures and PowerPoint presentations and hence reject SET methodologies as so much techno-wizardry. With the entry of web-based programmes into the expanding field of SETs, and increasing empirical evidence that active learning improves grades and closes gender and socio-economic gaps, the ethical question arises, are we not obliged as law teachers to employ them? This paper examines in three steps that gap between pronouncing from the podium and actively engaging learners by clicker response or web-based devices. Part I reviews the growing literature on active learning including SET-based methods. Part II examines two models of SETs, remote-based and web-based, for their comparative attributes and drawbacks, with a particular focus on law teaching. Part III details the author’s experiences with the clicker system teaching introductory law and criminology and offers practical suggestions for facilitating its use. The paper concludes that, in light of recent evidence of heightened learning success using active learning methodologies, and the impending complexity to education posed by wearable technologies, the ethical question of pedagogical competence grows in importance.     

Educational saliency and careers in criminal justice: The case of Louisiana

While there is little consensus as to the exact form and structure of an academic criminal justice program, the traditional model of higher education, with its emphasis on qualified and productive faculty, has gained popular acceptance in the past decade. Concurrently, graduates of criminal justice programs have often found that prospective employers do not value their degrees. This article explores the relationships between student evaluations of their educational experiences, the structural characteristics identified as essential to an educational program, and the mechanisms used by ex-students to reduce dissonance caused by employer rejection or a poor job market.In 1980 a total of 411 recent graduates of eight criminal justice programs in Louisiana responded to a questionnaire designed to measure their attitudes toward and evaluations of their educations. Several key structural variables frequently associated with quality higher education failed to predict student evaluations. Two exceptions were ration of senior faculty and ratio of ex-police as faculty, and the effects of these variables on student evaluations were inverse. Overall, the best predictor of the saliency of one's educational experiences was the student's evaluation of the current job market in criminal justice. This variable was followed, in descending order by sex, ratio of faculty with senior rank, years since graduation, type of degree granted, and ratio of ex-police as faculty.     

Of Athenians and Spartans: Profiles of freedom and enlightenment in the leadership styles of criminal justice academic administrators: An essay

This essay examines the dubious relationship between the quality of criminal justice education and the kind of treatment faculty members and students receive from their academic administrators. It is based on three premises: criminal justice colleges and departments should be held to higher rational and moral standards not because they are qualitatively different from other liberal arts departments, but because they teach justice; if the virtues of criminal justice are worth teaching, then criminal justice faculty members and students should be treated in a manner consistent with these virtues; and treating criminal justice faculty members and students unfairly, disrespectfully, or irresponsibly makes them unable or disinterested in endorsing the noble nature of criminal justice. This article categorizes academic administrators as either Athenians or Spartans. The former are best suited intellectually and temperamentally to administer because they possess a talent for reasoning and act in good faith. The latter are unsuited because, regardless of how well they mask it, they practice domination, deception, favoritism, and indignity.This essay is a theoretical discourse based on the contiguity of modalities, experiences, and impressions generally shared by criminal justice educators and graduate students. Its logic is Humeian and its method is broadly ethnographic.     

The effects of criminal justice pedagogy on student attitudes

To determine the effects of an introductory criminal justice course on the attitudes of students toward the police, questionnaires were given in the first week of the semester to 425 students enrolled in Introduction to Criminal Justice courses and to 301 students enrolled in Introduction to Sociology courses. The survey was then readministered in the final week of the semester. The data reveal that while significant initial differences existed in orientation among the various student groupings, there was no significant change in attitudes between the pretest and posttest measurements.     

Managing reductions in criminal justice education programs

The types of changes facing criminal justice education administrators and faculty mandate attention to the real world of fiscal stress and the concomitant problem of student declines. Current trends emphasize that all of those involved in the criminal justice education field must look beyond short-term cyclical problems involving the delivery of criminal justice educational services. The issues of fiscal tension and student declines require hard choices, the development of new administrative skills, and the recognition that new behaviors will be mandatory for criminal justice education administrators during the rest of the eighties.     

Testing the Packer Theorem: The Efficiency of Florida’s Criminal Circuit Courts

Herbert Packer’s models of the criminal process are criminal justice theorems, often the foundation of student introduction to the field in introductory textbooks. To date, there is little empirical analysis of the conceptual foundations of the process-based models, namely that courts are more efficient through the utilization of plea bargains, while an increase in trials necessarily decreases efficiency. The present results reveal wide variability in Florida circuit criminal court efficiency within and between circuits from 2004/05 to 2010/11. Regression analysis revealed that the year over year difference in both plea bargain (β?=?.14) and trial percentage (β?=?.13) significantly predicted (p?<?.05) year over year changes in efficiency, but explained a small amount of the variance (R ²?=?.026) controlling for other factors (total model R ²?=?.58–.62). These results show there is more capacity for trials within the Florida courts, and an increase in trials does not negatively impact court efficiency as expected but that other factors are far more relevant in explaining changes in efficiency outcomes. Furthermore, the Packer “assembly line” analogy, a basic tenet of the criminal process, is not found: plea bargains do not strongly predict or explain court efficiency, with structures playing a greater role in court outcomes than the processes conceptualized by Packer. The application to courts and impact on criminal justice education are discussed.     

Student conduct,restorative justice,and student development: findings from the STARR project: a student accountability and restorative research project

The STudent Accountability and Restorative Research (STARR) Project is a multi-campus study of college student disciplinary practices in the USA, comparing traditional conduct hearings that use restorative justice practices alongside traditional college student misconduct hearings. A coherent set of learning goals in college student conduct administration and a robust data-set capable of measuring student learning across different types of disciplinary practice, in particular, comparing traditional ‘model code’ practice with emerging restorative justice processes are examined. Integrating several student development theories, we identify six student development goals: just community/self-authorship, active accountability, interpersonal competence, social ties to institution, procedural fairness, and closure. The STARR Project includes data from 18 college and university campuses across the USA. We analyzed 659 student conduct cases based on surveys of student offenders, conduct officers, and other participants in the conduct processes. Using multiple regression to control for a variety of influences, we determined that the type of conduct process used is the single most influential factor in student learning. In addition, restorative justice practices were routinely found to have a greater impact on student learning than model code hearings.     

Ethics in Criminal Justice: John Dewey Revisited

John Dewey has much to say to contemporary criminal justice educational strategies, particularly in respect to broadening the curriculum to include exposure to the humanities, values exploration, and moral decision-making. The case study method, coupled with Socratic teaching use of varied materials from the humanities, can approach an optimal learning experience within the Dewayan model. This educational model is offered in response to the calls for sensitive, holistic criminal justice practitioners in the modern age.     

Transgender Victims and Offenders: Failures of the United States Criminal Justice System and the Necessity of Queer Criminology

The purpose of this article is to highlight the experiences of transgender people within the criminal justice system as both victims and offenders. We contend that queer criminology is both needed and can assist in exploring the experiences of this unique population who face discrimination within the US criminal justice system and who are often ignored within criminological research. The article will provide an overview of transgender people’s general experiences within the criminal justice system and explore influences of cultural stereotypes about transgender people by examining the cases of three transgender victims of violence—Brandon Teena, Gwen Araujo, and Cece McDonald. This article highlights the importance of concepts such as sex, gender, transpanic, transphobia, victim-blaming, and the responses by key players in the criminal justice system (police, courts, and corrections) to transgender victims and offenders.     

BADASSES: The Rise of Women in Criminal Justice

Little is known about the experiences and career trajectories of women working in the criminal justice field. Criminal justice, particularly law enforcement, has historically been largely a male-dominated career field. This study examines the experiences of 850 women working in the criminal justice field; in policing, courts, corrections, victim services, and academia. The present study collected data in 2017 and asked women working in the criminal justice field about their employment. Respondents said that they experienced a wide range of gender discrimination but did not see gender discrimination as a barrier to their success. The women identified personal and professional perseverance, strong mentorship, and family support as contributing factors to their success. Findings highlight the experience and challenges of women working at all levels and in all components of the criminal justice system and the journey of these women at a unique time in the history of criminal justice and evolution of women in the workplace. Implications for criminal justice, advice for current and aspiring women working in the field, and the nature of the experience for women in criminal justice are discussed.     

Racial Minority Women and Criminal Justice Responses to Domestic Violence

Racialized minority women’s experiences with Canadian specialized criminal justice responses to domestic violence have seldom been documented. Informed by an intersectionality framework, this qualitative study presents the struggles of 14 racial minority women from three Canadian cities and their experiences with the police and criminal court’s response to their partner’s acts of domestic violence. The results focus on how well specialized criminal justice responses address the needs of these women and protect them from further violence. Factors that facilitate or deter these women from approaching the criminal justice system for help are highlighted. The implications of these women’s narratives for criminal justice responses to domestic violence are discussed.     

Melodramatic and consentient images in introductory criminal justice textbooks

Previous scholarly attention to introductory criminal justice textbooks observed the texts' organization, structure, and content. This study added to this literature by examining the photographs used in ten leading criminal justice textbooks when providing demographic portraits (e.g., race, gender) of alleged and convicted criminals, criminal offenses, clothing and appearances (of suspects/criminals), and the degree to which authorities confined suspects/criminals. In regard to the above, this study distinguished between consentient (relying on systematic empirical findings) and melodramatic (relying on more sensationalized news coverage) images and representative (quantitatively standard) and notorious (qualitatively distinct) crimes. Results suggested texts provided consentient images of suspect/offender race and gender, but relied on melodramatic images in disproportionate depictions of suspects/defendants charged with, or convicted of murder. Further, it was found that although notorious crimes and criminals represent qualitative rarities in the overall criminal justice system, they were depicted in 31 percent of images presented in texts.     

Where Do They Belong? Giving Victims a Place in the Criminal Justice Process

Historically, victims once had an active participatory role in the criminal justice process and were responsible for not only initiating but also for prosecuting offenders. In common law countries, victims were gradually sidelined and by the 20th century, their role was reduced to that of a witness to a crime against the state. The exclusion of victims from the criminal justice process is a major source of dissatisfaction for victims as many of them want to participate in the criminal justice process. This has fuelled initiatives with restorative justice that claim to more fully include victims than conventional criminal justice. This paper examines three different approaches found in the literature on how to let victims participate. One view is that victims should leave the criminal justice system and that criminal justice should be replaced by alternative, restorative justice schemes in which victims are granted full recognition and respect for their dignity. A second approach is to integrate restorative practices such as victim-offender mediation in the criminal justice process. The third approach is to integrate victim participation and respect (so-called restorative values) in the criminal justice system. These three approaches are discussed and compared with one another. The paper closes with recommendations for criminal law reform.     

Criminal justice faculty and criminal justice students: A case for the missing data

This article reviews the most current criminal justice education research. It examines the interrelationship between the work of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, the Joint Commission on Criminology and Criminal Justice Education and Standards, and the National Advisory Commission on Higher Education for Police, and describes and compares some of their more important findings. Discussed are types of criminal justice programs; characteristics of criminal justice faculty, particularly in terms of earned academic degrees; agency work experience; commitment to research and teaching; types of criminal justice curricula, as typified by certain educational philosophies; and criminal justice students. Although this article notes several areas with which future research might become fruitfully involved, the area in need of most immediate attention, and the area that current research has all but ignored, is the criminal justice student.