Criminology and Criminal Justice (CCJ)
CCJ 1010 - Introduction to Criminal Justice
3 Credits
This course serves to introduce students to the three main components of the criminal justice system: the police, courts, and corrections. Topical coverage in this course includes: definitions/classification of offenses, using and accessing crime data, correlates and causes of victimization and offending, operation and role of the various components of the criminal justice system as well as outcomes and policy issues.
Attributes: UUC:Social & Behavioral Sci
CCJ 1930 - Special Topics
3 Credits
A rotating selection of courses are periodically offered as special topics classes.
CCJ 2050 - Multiculturalism for Criminal Justice Professionals
3 Credits
This class examines how class, race, sex and religion/culture impact the operation of the criminal justice system and affect employees, victims and perpetrators. Emphasis will be placed on sensitizing students to how social and demographic factors influence the lived experience of those associated with the criminal justice system as perpetrators, victims, witnesses or professionals and how students can become agents of change as professionals within the CJ system.
Attributes: BHS-Professional, Forensic Science CCJ Elective, UUC:Dignity, Ethics & Just Soc, UUC:Global Interdependence, UUC:Identities in Context
CCJ 2100 - Multiculturalism for the Workplace
3 Credits
This class examines what is expected of professionals in a multicultural world and prepares tomorrow’s professionals for the opportunities of a multicultural workplace. This class will explore legal, ethical and practical considerations related to race, biological sex, gender, sexual orientation, social class, culture and the power relations they mark. It will also help students to understand their own biases and to prevent biases from becoming actualized as discrimination in the workplace and beyond.
Attributes: UUC:Dignity, Ethics & Just Soc, UUC:Identities in Context
CCJ 2150 - Criminology: Nature of Crime
3 Credits
This course provides an introduction to the various theories of criminal offending. Particular attention is paid to both the individual and the contextual level factors that contribute to or facilitate propensities toward criminal behaviors. Through the course materials, lectures, and discussions, students will begin to understand the nature of crime.
Attributes: BHS-Professional, Forensic Science CCJ Elective, UUC:Social & Behavioral Sci
CCJ 2200 - Policing & Society
3 Credits
This course provides an overview of the role that police plays in contemporary society. The topics covered include the history and organization of the police, patrol and other activities, police community relations, police culture, police discretion, and legal issues in policing.
Attributes: Forensic Science CCJ Elective
CCJ 2250 - Institutional & Community Corrections
3 Credits
This course serves to introduce students to major contemporary issues in both institutional and community corrections in the United States. Topics covered include detention, sentencing, intermediate sanctions, adult institutions, probation, parole, and correctional staffing and personnel issues. The procedures, practices, and personnel involved are also examined. Students will learn about the wide array of effective punishments and treatment programs that constitute alternatives to incarceration, and which are designed to meet the level of risk posed by, and the need of, each individual. These include probation, parole, electronic monitoring, house arrest, day-treatment centers, boot camps, restitution, fines and more.
Attributes: Public Health Major Elective, Urban Poverty - Cycles Exclusn, UUC:Social & Behavioral Sci
CCJ 2800X - Making the Carceral State: The History of Mass Incarceration
3 Credits
This course will study the development of the carceral state as a system designed to criminalize, punish, and control African Americans post-slavery to the present. An examination of political, economic, and social factors will contextualize the history of mass incarceration and how institutions were structured and (re)structured to target and exclude Blacks. In this course, students will explore current reform movements and identify additional areas for change.
Attributes: African American Studies, UUC:Social & Behavioral Sci
CCJ 2930 - Special Topics
3 Credits (Repeatable for credit)
A rotating selection of courses are periodically offered as special topics classes.
CCJ 3100 - Juvenile Justice & Delinquency
3 Credits
This course introduces students to the fundamentals of juvenile justice and delinquency. Particular emphasis is placed on the decision-making processes of police, courts and correction officials, charged with the apprehension and processing of juvenile offenders. This course also surveys youth crime and delinquent behavior. Particular focus is placed on individual and social factors contributing to such behavior; notable crime/delinquency causation theories; and the prevention, control, and treatment of youth offending. An assessment of efforts directed at the prevention and control of delinquency and the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders is made in light of major theoretical perspectives on delinquency.
Attributes: Urban Poverty - Cycles Exclusn
CCJ 3150 - Contemporary Theories of Crime
3 Credits
This course builds on the material covered in CCJ-2150 Criminology: Nature of Crime, by concentrating on developments in theories of crime in the latter part of the 20th century and into the new millennium. Special attention will be paid to integrated, developmental, and life course theories. The course will include a service learning dimension that places students in community agencies that work with offenders or with individuals who live in high-risk environments so that students develop a more personal understanding of the human side of crime and justice.
Attributes: BHS-Professional, Public Health Major Elective
CCJ 3200 - Ethics in Criminal Justice
3 Credits
The primary objective of this course is to familiarize students with the major ethical themes and debates in criminal justice. Accordingly, the research, both empirical and theoretical (normative), that has been conducted with regard to policing, courts, and corrections (as well as a number of particular ethical issues) will be the major focus of the course discussions. In the end, students should not only be familiar with the broad conceptual debates and controversies surrounding criminal justice alternatives, but should also have a firm understanding of the different ways in which ethical evaluations of those alternatives are made.
Attributes: BHS-Professional, Urban Poverty - Cycles Exclusn
CCJ 3300 - Corporate & White Collar Crime
3 Credits
This course explores types, causes, and correlates of white-collar/corporate criminal offenses. Students will learn about the major types of white collar crime, understand and evaluate competing theories used to explain white-collar/corporate criminality and critique the system's response to this type of offending. Students will learn about how class, sex and race impact upon white-collar crime and its punishment. Students will apply law and theory to actual cases through a case study approach emphasizing the financial and social costs of white-collar offending.
Attributes: Forensic Science CCJ Elective, UUC:Identities in Context, UUC:Social & Behavioral Sci
CCJ 3350 - Understanding Serial Killers
3 Credits
This course examines the phenomenon of serial killers in both theory and practice, asking complex questions about why this type of offending occurs, what systemic factors influence serial offending and society’s reaction to it and what law enforcement can do to enhance solvability. The course examines the extent to which criminological theory can explain observed behavior in serial killers. It also scrutinizes how the criminal justice system deals with serial killers and how law enforcement can optimize the chances of apprehension through the application of modern and conventional investigative techniques. Students in this course collaborate on a major, summative project.
Prerequisite(s): (CORE 1000 or UUC Ignite Seminar Waiver with a minimum score of S); CORE 1500*; Minimum Earned Credits of 60
* Concurrent enrollment allowed.
Attributes: Forensic Science CCJ Elective, UUC:Collaborative Inquiry
CCJ 3400 - Victimology & Victimization
3 Credits
This course provides students with a comprehensive introduction to the study of victims of crime. Course materials cover a broad variety of victim-related topics, including: perspectives on and explanations of victimization, various patterns of victimization, social characteristics of victims, victims’ roles in criminal offending, victims’ treatment by criminal justice decision makers (e.g., police, attorneys, judges), and efforts designed to reduce to the various consequences associated with being a crime victim.
Attributes: Forensic Science CCJ Elective, Public Health Major Elective
CCJ 3401X - American Incarceration
3 Credits
This course uses history, literature, theory, and popular cultural sources to explore incarceration in the United States. Topics may include religion, disability, juvenile justice, race, class, sexuality, and gender. Using history, social theory, film, fiction and autobiography, the course surveys the cultural history of incarceration in America, and examines the place of incarceration in American culture.
Attributes: American Studies Identities, American Studies Minor, American Studies Electives, Global Local Justice-Domestic, UUC:Aesthetics, Hist & Culture, UUC:Identities in Context, Urban Poverty - Cycles Exclusn, Diversity in the US (A&S)
CCJ 3450 - Gender, Sexuality, and the Criminal Justice System
3 Credits
This course explores the important intersectional relationship between gender/sexuality and the criminal justice system. This course also examines the ciscender women’s place in the criminal justice system and that of the LGBTQIA+ community. This course incorporates feminist approaches to criminology and approaches from Queer Criminology, a theoretical and practical approach that looks to highlight and draw attention to the stigmatization, the criminalization, and in many ways the rejection of the Queer community, which is to say the LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) population, as both victims and offenders, by the academe and the criminal legal system. (Offered in the Spring Semesters).
Attributes: Forensic Science CCJ Elective, UUC:Identities in Context, UUC:Social & Behavioral Sci
CCJ 3500 - Race, Ethnicity, and the Criminal Justice System
3 Credits
This course will examine the distribution of crime within subgroups in American society and the role of criminological theory and empirical evidence in the explanations of criminality. The course will provide students the opportunity to critically assess the nature of the association between race/ethnicity and justice. Using an experiential learning model, students will participate in service learning in the St. Louis metropolitan area to understand how social conditions may also contribute to the associations between race/ethnicity and crime. Through this interactive learning method students will explore the facts and fiction of the nexus between race and crime.
Attributes: Forensic Science CCJ Elective, Public Health Major Elective, UUC:Identities in Context, Urban Poverty - Cycles Exclusn
CCJ 3600 - Mental Health & Crime
3 Credits
Mental Health & Crime: This course will provide students with a comprehensive overview of the issues and challenges located at the intersection of mental health/illness and the criminal justice system. Attention will be focused on a range of issues, including, but not limited to, the definition of mental illness, deinstitutionalization and the criminalization of the mentally ill, the impact of mental illness on criminal proceedings, treatment/intervention effectiveness, and the reentry/reintegration of mentally ill individuals.
Attributes: BHS-Professional, Forensic Science CCJ Elective, Public Health Major Elective
CCJ 3700 - Research Methods in Criminology and Criminal Justice
3 Credits
This course provides the fundamental information, skills, and understanding necessary for undergraduate students to digest, comprehend, and critique the basic methodological and statistical information that they will most likely confront in their future studies and current/future professions. Specific attention is paid to providing the knowledge base necessary to critically read and review substantive research articles, evaluation reports, and government documents pervasive in criminology and criminal justice professions. (Offered in Fall)
Prerequisite(s): Minimum Earned Credits of 60
CCJ 3750 - Statistics in Criminology and Criminal Justice
3 Credits
This course serves to introduce students to the quantitative skills, methods, and techniques necessary for analyzing the implementation and impact of programs and policies, specifically those related to criminology and criminal justice. Students will learn the vocabulary associated with scientific thinking and research, data collection, data analysis, data presentation, and interpretation and discussion of analytical results. This is an introductory course in quantitative statistical analysis that covers the properties/characteristics and distributions of data and variables particularly relevant to CCJ as well as both descriptive and inferential statistical approaches to analyzing research questions. (Offered in Spring)
Prerequisite(s): Minimum Earned Credits of 45
CCJ 3800X - Violence Against Women
3 Credits
This course focuses on the causes, effects, and institutional responses to several types of gender-based violence, including sexual assault, intimate partner violence, sexual harassment, and sex trafficking. Includes examination of the psychological, legal, sociological, and political discourse surrounding these issues.
Attributes: UG Pol Sci Public Law Elective, Women's & Gender Studies
CCJ 3930 - Special Topics
3 Credits
A rotating selection of courses are periodically offered as special topics classes.
CCJ 4050 - Criminal Law & Procedure
3 Credits
This course provides students with a basic understanding of substantive and procedural criminal law. Understanding criminal law and procedure is fundamental to understanding how our courts operate as well as understanding the legal constraints under which law enforcement and correctional personnel must operate. The course lays a foundation for understanding how evidence is used in the prosecution of criminal offenses.
Attributes: Forensic Science CCJ Elective, UUC:Social & Behavioral Sci
CCJ 4150 - Criminal Investigations
3 Credits
This class is designed to provide students with a basic understanding of the criminal investigation process. Students will learn how to properly conduct an investigation, specifically, how to properly secure a crime scene, how to properly document investigative efforts (e.g., sketch, model, and photograph a crime scenes), how to properly search a scene, how to conduct effective interviews, interrogations, and surveillances, and how to handle informants and conduct undercover work. Emphasis will be placed on understanding why proper criminal investigative techniques are so important, ethics in investigations, and how to prepare a credible and winnable case for the prosecution.
Attributes: Forensic Science CCJ Elective
CCJ 4600 - Mentored Research in CCJ
1-3 Credits (Repeatable for credit)
This course provides students with an opportunity to work with and assist a faculty member in an ongoing research project. The course requirements are tailored to the specific dimensions of the research project on which the student collaborates. These opportunities can include literature reviews, data entry and analysis, survey administration, or any other assigned task that allows the student to partner with a faculty member to learn, through a hands-on approach, the process of conducting a research project.
CCJ 4910 - Criminology and Criminal Justice Internship
3 Credits (Repeatable up to 6 credits)
This undergraduate criminology/criminal justice internship course provides students with an opportunity to learn about and experience the criminal and/or juvenile justice systems from the inside. Students will work with criminal/juvenile justice practitioners to understand the workings of various justice agencies. As an experiential course students are required to commit at least 100 hours to the agency they select. Students are also required to complete assigned readings and submit written work - including an internship journal and an essay.
Prerequisite(s): (CORE 1000 or UUC Ignite Seminar Waiver with a minimum score of S); CORE 1500*
* Concurrent enrollment allowed.
Restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to students with a major in Criminology Criminal Justice.
Attributes: UUC:Reflection-in-Action
CCJ 4915 - Externship in CCJ
1-3 Credits (Repeatable for credit)
The course is designed to allow students an opportunity to immerse themselves in local communities and organizations, particularly those working with disadvantaged communities in order to understand the human side of living in risk – especially since high-risk conditions (e.g., poverty, residential instability, racial segregation, etc.) are associated with higher rates of officially reported criminal offending. Students are challenged to examine the consequences of environmental stressors on populations and what that might mean to and for justice systems. The course combines the academic experience with Ignatian principles of experience and reflection, in order to gain self-awareness critical to criminal justice practice.
Prerequisite(s): CORE 1500*; (CORE 1000 or UUC Ignite Seminar Waiver with a minimum score of S)
* Concurrent enrollment allowed.
Attributes: UUC:Reflection-in-Action
CCJ 4930 - Special Topics
3 Credits
A rotating selection of courses are periodically offered as special topics classes.
CCJ 4960 - Criminology and Criminal Justice Capstone
3 Credits
This course analyzes the various actors in the criminal justice system, their decision making processes, and the policies they create and implement. The course offers an integrative framework for understanding the policies emanating from the criminal justice system. This final course provides an opportunity to integrate key concepts of criminology/criminal justice in a specific area of interest. Capstone projects are expected to demonstrate competence in critical thinking, inquiry skills, and the synthesis of knowledge through the development and presentation of an examination of a particular CCJ policy, program, and/or initiative.
Prerequisite(s): CCJ 1010; (CCJ 2050 or CCJ 2100); CCJ 2150; CCJ 3700; CCJ 3750
Restrictions:
Enrollment limited to students in the BA Criminology Crim Justice program.
CCJ 4980 - Advanced Independent Study in Criminology & Criminal Justice
1-6 Credits (Repeatable for credit)
The course provides students with an opportunity to develop their own research project that will be completed independently under their own initiative. The student will receive guidance and support of the assigned faculty member. The course requires prior approval of the faculty member and completion of a contract of agreement on products to be delivered and method of evaluating course/project outcomes.
CCJ 5000 - Criminological Theory
3 Credits
This course examines the role of criminological theory in the development of criminal justice policy. Theories examined include both macro and micro level theories that influence strategies for deploying justice personnel and developing treatment strategies. The course includes a focus on the importance of theory for the allocation of resources, identification of promising strategies for prevention and intervention, justice program success, for criminological theory organizes the way scholars and practitioners observe and explain delinquent and criminal behavior. Theories of crime also help explain how and why the justice system should respond and set policy for addressing criminal behavior.
CCJ 5100 - Ethics in the Administration of Justice
3 Credits
This course familiarizes students with the major ethical themes and debates in criminology and criminal justice. Through analysis of empirical and theoretical research that has been conducted with regard to policing, courts, and corrections (as well as a number of particular ethical issues) students will gain the knowledge necessary to identify, understand, evaluate, and respond appropriately to ethically-challenging circumstances they are likely to encounter as criminal justice professionals. Upon completion of the class, students will be familiar with the broad conceptual debates and controversies surrounding criminology and criminal justice options and alternatives and will have a comprehensive understanding of the different ways in which ethical evaluations of those options and alternatives are made.
CCJ 5200 - Research Methods
3 Credits
This course provides the fundamental information, skills, and understanding necessary for graduate students to digest, comprehend, and critique the basic methodological and statistical information that they will most likely confront in their future studies and current/future professions. Specific attention is paid to providing the knowledge base necessary to critically read and review substantive research articles, evaluation reports, and government documents pervasive in criminology and criminal justice professions.
CCJ 5300 - Proseminar in Criminal Justice
3 Credits
This course provides students with a foundational exploration of the nature and scope of the criminal justice process. Topics considered will include policing, prosecution, the court system, the correction system, and juvenile justice, as well as policy implications associated with criminal justice in America. The operations and behavior of the criminal justice system are assessed in the context of major theoretical, historical, and organizational influences found in the field.
CCJ 5910 - Criminology and Criminal Justice Internship
3 Credits (Repeatable up to 6 credits)
This graduate level criminology/criminal justice internship course provides students with an opportunity to learn about and experience the criminal and/or juvenile justice systems from the inside. Students will work with criminal/juvenile justice practitioners to understand the workings of various justice agencies. As an experiential course students are required to commit at least 150 hours to the agency they select. Students are also required to complete assigned readings and submit written work - including an internship journal and a program/policy proposal paper. Offered fall, spring and summer.
CCJ 5930 - Special Topics
1-3 Credits (Repeatable for credit)
A rotating selection of courses are periodically offered as special topics classes.
CCJ 5980 - Graduate Independent Study in Criminology & Criminal Justice
1-3 Credits (Repeatable for credit)
The course provides students with an opportunity to develop their own research project that will be completed independently under their own initiative. The student will receive guidance and support of the assigned faculty member. The course requires prior approval of the faculty member and completion of a contract of agreement on products to be delivered and method of evaluating course/project outcomes.
CCJ 5990 - Thesis Research
0-6 Credits (Repeatable for credit)
Thesis Research.
CCJ 6000 - Issues in Policing
3 Credits
This course is designed to provide a comprehensive examination of policing in the United States. It will examine the origins and history of policing and the current state of knowledge surrounding police organizations, police subculture, police behavior, police-community relations, and methods of controlling police behavior and misconduct. The course will ultimately provide students with a critical and contextual understanding of the evolution of policing, the functions of policing in contemporary society, and the future of policing in America.
CCJ 6100 - Issues in Corrections
3 Credits
This is an advanced seminar in corrections aimed at graduate (MS) students. This course examines both institutional as well as community corrections although the emphasis--as in real life--is placed on incarceration. Students will read (and think) extensively on timely issues surrounding contemporary corrections including: prisons, jails, probation and parole, inmate perspectives, institutional misconduct/disorder/violence, rehabilitation/treatment programming, gender, family-related concerns, and reentry. Thus, this course provides a broad foundation of information on US corrections today.
CCJ 6200 - Issues in Juvenile Justice Administration
3 Credits
The course examines the roots of the juvenile court and its associated institutions, issues in its administration, and current issues and challenges to its functioning. From its inception in 1899 the juvenile justice system represented a unique legal institution. By design it is a system of individualized justice. The nature of the juvenile system makes administering it a challenge. The juvenile justice system must hold youth accountable for delinquent behavior while crafting individualized treatment plans. As an open system it is further pressed by the desires of external constituencies that seek retribution and punishment which are at times in opposition to individualized care.
CCJ 6400 - Issues in Jurisprudence
3 Credits
This course provides students with a working knowledge of how the courts operate and fit within our democracy. Students will gain an understanding of the parameters of Constitutional guarantees including the Due Process Clause, the Equal Protection Clause and various guarantees contained in the Bill of Rights and how the judiciary effectuates those rights. Special emphasis will be placed on understanding how the Constitution impacts upon the operation of the law enforcement and correctional components of the criminal justice system. Sources of civil and criminal civil rights liability will be explored with an emphasis on best practices to avoid and minimize risk of liability. In addition, students will gain the tools to meaningfully access, understand and evaluate legal materials, particularly case law and statutory law.
CCJ 6930 - Special Topics
1-3 Credits (Repeatable for credit)
A rotating selection of courses are periodically offered as special topics classes.
CCJ 6980 - Graduate Independent Study in Criminology & Criminal Justice
1 or 3 Credits (Repeatable for credit)
The course provides students with an opportunity to develop their own research project that will be completed independently under their own initiative. The student will receive guidance and support of the assigned faculty member. The course requires prior approval of the faculty member and completion of a contract of agreement on products to be delivered and method of evaluating course/project outcomes.