The Importance of Discussing Crime Victimization in Criminal Justice Courses: An Empirical Assessment of a New Curriculum to Enhance Student learning

Abstract

Victimization and the costs of crime sometimes can be an afterthought in courses on crime and criminal justice, which often are focused on offenders. However, shifting attention to victims of crime potentially motivates students to better understand the causes and consequences of criminal victimization, thereby improving the learning of course concepts and producing better-prepared criminal justice practitioners. A new curriculum kit on understanding crime victims was implemented in two of three sections of a criminological theory course, with the third section acting as a control group having a unit on “offenders” instead of “victims.” In short, the kit did improve student knowledge of crime victimization, but so did a lecture on offenders. Interestingly, students exposed to the kit coupled with a service learning component continued to improve knowledge of crime victimization throughout the course, while the control group did not. Implications are discussed.

Acknowledgments

A previous draft of this paper was presented at the American Society of Criminology 64th annual meeting in Chicago, IL. Special thanks to David Hirschel and Jonathan Lee, as well as the participants at the ASC meeting and the anonymous JCJE reviewers, for their helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Jennifer C. Gibbs, PhD, is an assistant professor of Criminal Justice in the School of Public Affairs at Penn State Harrisburg, where she studies policing, terrorism, violence and victimization, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Her dissertation, “The Relationship between Legitimacy, Terrorist Attacks and the Police”, completed at the University of Maryland, College Park, won the Homicide Research Working Group 2012 Richard Block Outstanding Dissertation Award. Her recent work has been published in journals including Crime, Law and Social Change; Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management; Police Practice and Research: An International Journal; and Journal of Active Learning in Higher Education. Her textbook on Deviance and Deviants: A Sociological Approach, co-authored with William E Thompson, is in press with Wiley-Blackwell.

Notes

The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this manuscript are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the US Department of Justice.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the University of Massachusetts Lowell [UML Project No. S51000000010939] under a cooperative agreement [grant # 2009-VF-GX-K006] with the Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice.