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Abstract
Recently there has been a vigorous dialogue over the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) academic standards pertaining to the role of JDs within criminal justice academic programs. It is a next logical step to open a discussion on a related aspect of the ACJS standards: “doctorates in a closely related field.” This discussion should center on how “closely” the “closely related fields” should be. This article examines the relationship between an education in sociology and criminology/criminal justice programs respectively by comparing the general curricular requirements, undergraduate and graduate, in a selection of sociology and criminology and criminal justice programs. This analysis indicates that there is a great deal of similarity within the sociology curricula, which contain sociologically oriented classes and criminology/criminal justice curricula, which contain criminologically oriented courses, but there is little overlap in course offerings across these two academic areas. Specifically, sociology graduates are not exposed to a meaningful number of criminology/criminal justice classes.
Notes
1. While we were finalizing this study, a new ranking was announced. The only difference between 2005 and 2009 rankings was some minor switching between the ranks 4 and 10 as well as the omission of the University of Nebraska at Omaha (9) and the University of Pennsylvania (10) and the addition of CUNY—John Jay College (10) and Florida State University (7). Because there was little change in the rankings (rank and program offerings), we decided to stay with our initial analysis of the 2005 USNWR rankings.