Career Aspirations, Influences, and Motives in Undergraduate Criminal Justice Majors: A Comparison of Two Student Cohorts Assessed Seven Years apart

Abstract

Career aspirations, influences, and motives were compared for cohorts of criminal justice majors surveyed in 2014 (N = 204) and 2021 (N = 218). The first hypotheses held that there would be significantly fewer students interested in a career in law enforcement in 2021 than in 2014 because of recent events involving police use of excessive force against people of color. Contrary to this hypothesis, interest in a law enforcement career, particularly federal law enforcement, grew rather than shrank between 2014 and 2021. A second hypothesis predicted an increase in altruistic motives and a decrease in egotistic motives for a criminal justice career between 2014 and 2021. This hypothesis received partial support. A third hypothesis, this one testing whether law enforcement career aspirations and media influences on career choice in criminal justice majors decreased and teacher/professor influences increased as class standing (freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior) increased, also received support.

Keywords:

• Criminal justice career aspirations
• altruistic and egotistic motives
• social influences

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 When freshman were removed from the analyses, the 2014 (M = 2.66, SD = 1.23) and 2021 (M = 2.89, SD = 1.28) cohorts were no longer significantly different in influences from television and movies, t(263) = -1.48, p = .14, whereas the 2021 cohort was still significantly less likely to mention influences from teachers and professors (M = 3.22, SD = 1.28) than the 2014 cohort (M = 3.55, SD = 1.20), t(263) = 2.15, p < .05.

2 The male vs. female ratios were based on the total number of criminal justice majors in each cohort (507 in 2014 and 349 in 2021), whereas the White vs. non-White ratios were based only on students who completed the survey because total numbers were unavailable for majors’ racial and ethnic status.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Glenn D. Walters

Glenn D. Walters, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Kutztown University in Kutztown, Pennsylvania where he teaches classes in criminology, corrections, and drugs and crime. Prior to this, he worked 27 years as a clinical psychologist in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. His current research interests include criminal thinking, mediation analysis, and the development of an integrated theory of offending behavior. Dr. Walters’ research has appeared in Criminology, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Justice Quarterly, and Law and Human Behavior.

Lindsey Runell

Lindsey Runell, J.D., Ph.D. is an associate professor of criminal justice at Kutztown University, where she teaches courses in criminal justice, criminal law, evidence, and policy, punishment, and society. She holds a Ph.D. in criminal justice from Rutgers University and a J.D. from The George Washington University Law School. Dr. Runell’s scholarly research has appeared in the International Journal of Bullying Prevention, Aggressive Behavior, Journal of Social Work, and The Prison Journal, among others.

Jonathan Kremser

Jonathan Kremser, Ph.D. is professor and chair of criminal justice at Kutztown University. His research interests include school safety, school crime, and security. He teaches courses in security management, loss prevention & asset protection, and criminology. He received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University and publishes widely in the area of school violence and security.