Criminal Justice Education: Are We Missing One-third of the Crime Triangle?

Abstract

Theoretical explanations, systemic response, and policy work on offenders and specific crime types are the backbone of criminal justice curricula in the United States. However, a similar breadth and depth of education on crime victims appear to be lacking in traditional criminal justice curricula, despite voluminous research on victims of crime. In this exploratory study, the authors conducted a content analysis of 679 programs from the Academy of Criminal Justice (ACJS) website directory. Departmental and course-level variables were included in the analysis. Results indicate that while more than half of the programs have faculty with expressed interests in victimization, only 11% of programs studied required coursework on crime victims and/or victimization. Implications of the results are discussed.

Notes

¹ http://www.acjs.org/pubs/167_771_12624.cfm.

² While ACJS is an international association, the current analysis was limited to academic institutes within the United States. Furthermore, the directory is limited to members who have opted in on having their information published on the online directory.

³ This variable was originally coded as continuous, but for the purposes of the chi-square analyses in this article, it was recoded as ordinal. Descriptives for both measures are offered in the tables.

⁴ “Members’ interests include, but are not limited to: criminal victimization, crime prevention, interpersonal violence, child maltreatment, domestic and sexual violence, victim trauma, victim rights and services for victims.” (http://www.acjs.org/pubs/167_2134_14479.cfm).

⁵ This variable was originally coded as continuous, but for the purposes of the chi-square analyses in this article, it was recoded as ordinal. Descriptives for both measures are offered in the tables.

⁶ See the earlier discussion surrounding the unit of analysis in this study.

⁷ Due to space limitations, the distribution of course offerings is not included in the tables, but is available upon request from first author.