Course PurposeWelcome to AJS-200 Current Issues in Criminal JusticeIn this course, we will be studying the major current issues facing the criminal justice system.  We will use as our starting point the 2015 President's 21st Century Policing Task Force report on the police.  This report came about after the death of Michael Brown, shot and killed by a Ferguson Missouri police officer. Many of the significant challenges to the way policing is carried out today came about following that one event.  This course will allow you the student to examine the different calls for police reform and research the pros and cons of each.  This course is an OER course meaning that there is NO TEXTBOOK to purchase.  Instead, we will identify and use as our training material the governmental documents and other open resource documents on the internet to gain our insights into the topic of each week. 

Learning Objective To familiarise students with the framework, key principles and statutes surrounding social work intervention with families and adult offenders.

This book provides an overview of the criminal justice system of the United States. It is intended to provide the introductory student a concise yet balanced introduction to the workings of the legal system as well as policing, courts, corrections, and juvenile justice. Six chapters, each divided into five sections, provide the reader a consistent, comfortable format as well as providing the instructor with a consistent framework for ease of instructional design.

This drive folder includes an Accessible Syllabus, Increased Level of Cultural Responsiveness document, and Legacy Assignment.

CRJ 331D
Police & Community: Policy Perspective

Course Description:
This course provides a broad review of contemporary American crime control policies and their relationship to community needs and citizen expectations. Emphasis on the influences that politics (i.e. minority groups, advocacy groups, etc.), culture, economics and bureaucracy have on policy development.

Learning Objectives:
Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:

Describe the police history, organizational and operational structures, strategies and tactics, ethics and policies, and behavior through the scope of police-community relations.
Adequately explain the complex nature of police-community relations and how it has changed throughout the years.
Understand the important theoretical foundations, empirical research findings, and contemporary practice, and to identify “best policies and practices” in policing.
Examine what is necessary for improving police-community relations in our society today.

This course provides an in-depth review of substantive criminal law in the federal & state systems including analysis of the essential elements of all major crimes, the concepts of constitutional review & judicial scrutiny & the principles governing legal challenges to the constitutionality of laws. It includes legal research & writing & analysis of case and statutory law. All course content created by Sara Horatius. Content added to OER Commons by Julia Greider.

This course provides an overview of the history and present-day operation of the criminal justice process in the United States. Students analyze the role, responsibility and authority of each of the components of the system: police, courts, corrections and rehabilitation. They will also explore and examine the underlying principles and values of justice. All course content by Nunotte Zama. Content added to OER Commons by Victoria Vidal

Criminal Law uses a two-step process to augment learning, called the applied approach. First, after building a strong foundation from scratch, Criminal Law introduces you to crimes and defenses that have been broken down into separate components. It is so much easier to memorize and comprehend the subject matter when it is simplified this way. However, becoming proficient in the law takes more than just memorization. You must be trained to take the laws you have studied and apply them to various fact patterns. Most students are expected to do this automatically, but application must be seen, experienced, and practiced before it comes naturally. Thus the second step of the applied approach is reviewing examples of the application of law to facts after dissecting and analyzing each legal concept. Some of the examples come from cases, and some are purely fictional. All the examples are memorable, even quirky, so they will stick in your mind and be available when you need them the most (like during an exam). After a few chapters, you will notice that you no longer obsess over an explanation that doesn’t completely make sense the first time you read it—you will just skip to the example. The examples clarify the principles for you, lightening the workload significantly.

This resource is of Wikipedia discusses on the historical aspects of Criminology , Different Schools of Criminological Thoughts including Sociological,Psychological, Marxism Theories, Labelling Theories, Routine Activity Theory, Biologilcal thoeries .

This source also discusses the definition and types of Crime.

Thus , the Wikipedia is the original source, it is shared in this OER platform to share the insights on Criminology to many of the people. Hence, I deserve no right on this resource , other than sharing it.

Criminology and Criminal Justice: Research & Writing Syllabus

CCJ 301
Course Description

Engages students in building research, critical thinking, and communication skills necessary to
succeed in upper division coursework in criminology and criminal justice and to achieve
professional goals. Fosters an understanding of the stages in the research process, including
literature review, research design, data gathering, and analysis. Emphasizes the ability to
effectively communicate analysis from criminological perspectives.

Learning Outcomes

This course is designed to guide you towards:
• Developing written, oral, and visual communication skills that reflect knowledge of the
disciple, professional behaviors, and abilities needed to enhance career opportunities.
• Employing critical thinking skills through comprehensive exploration of issues and ideas
before accepting or formulating an opinion when evaluating issues in criminology and
criminal justice.

'Decolonization and Justice: An Introductory Overview' emerged from the undergraduate students’ final assignment in JS-419 on Advanced Seminar in Criminal Justice at the University of Regina's Department of Justice Studies, Canada. This book focused on decolonization of multiple justice-related areas, such as policing, the court system, prison, restorative justice, and the studies of law and criminology. This is quite likely one of the few student-led book projects in Canada covering the range of decolonization topics. Ten student authors explored the concept of decolonization in law, policing, prison, court, mental health, transitional justice and restorative justice. We are grateful to receive funding support from the University of Regina’s OER Publishing Program Small Project Grant, which enabled us to hire a professional copy editor for the book.

For this assignment students analyze fingerprints at a burglary scene. They identify types of prints, recommend processing techniques, and analyze minutiae. 

Introduction to Criminal Investigation, Processes, Practices, and Thinking is a teaching text designed to assist the student in developing their own structured mental map of processes, practices, and thinking to conduct criminal investigations.

Delineating criminal investigation into operational descriptors of tactical-response and strategic response while using illustrations of task-skills and thinking-skills, the reader is guided into structured thinking practices. Using the graphic tools of a “Response Transition Matrix”, an “Investigative Funnel”, and the “STAIR Tool”, the reader is shown how to form their own mental map of investigative thinking that can later be articulated in support of forming their reasonable grounds to believe.

This book was written by MSW students as their final project for their Capstone class. Students were each assigned a chapter of the book to write to show that they had achieved competency as a Master’s level social worker. Chapters were assigned based on student interest and experience in certain areas of the field.

A student manual developed by the Utah State Board of Education, in cooperation with the Unified Police of Greater Salt Lake

John Emil List murdered his mother, wife, and three teenaged children on November 9, 1971 in their dilapidated Westfield, NJ mansion.  The victims were not discovered for nearly a month, and List escaped capture for nearly 18 years.  This repository includes primary source materials and lesson plans for instructors in criminal justice, history, and psychology.Repository Locationhttps://unioncc.instructure.com/courses/11394

An examination of the phenomenon of mass shootings in the United States. The course explores the available data on trends in and distribution of mass shootings, the characteristics of shooters, and patterns in the features of incidents, as well as proposed theories. Potential societal, law enforcement, and public policy responses, as distinct from political responses, are explored from a criminological perspective.

Learning Outcomes:
1. Describe the distinct phenomenon of mass shootings in the United States.
2. Explain how mass shootings differ from other types of mass murder, terrorism, or violent crimes.
3. Explore available data on trends and distribution of mass shootings in the United States.
4. Determine patterns in incident features including targeted victims, location, preparation, weaponry, and intended outcome of shooter.
5. Identify the patterns in characteristics of those who carry out mass shootings.
6. Evaluate societal response, law enforcement response, and public policy response to different mass shootings.
7. Analyze theories behind the phenomenon of mass shootings in the United States.

For this assignment students read about witness interviews and evidence from a case where a farming assistant was murdered. Students then analyze hair evidence along with other evidence and come to a conclusion about the killer.  

This website features many of the OER conversion projects completed at John Jay College over the past few years. Class conversions using the Blackboard platform are not represented because of the BB firewall. These are not the actual LibGuides, but content from the LibGuides, using the LibGuide platform for access. The entire website is public.

The left navigation panel displays the academic departments with the overview and objective of the department. Also, navigation to the specific departmental classes, with corresponding OER content, are found at the bottom of the academic department pages. You can also directly navigate to the specific converted class, by clicking on the course title under the department tab. When clicking on a specific class (e.g. Science 110), the link takes you to the course description, learning outcomes of the course and a link to the OER content for the specific course. The OER content features creative commons OER Textbooks, vetted open Internet sites, academic journal articles and library owned streaming video, requiring a login to the John Jay Library. Each academic department features a link to "Discussion and Comments". In addition all pages have navigation arrows to previous pages and next pages. On many of the OER content pages, the class calendar by week is featured with links to the reading assignments. In addition to the specific OER content by class, there is a link at the top of the main page to access generic OER by subject and/or topic.

This book is based on two open-access textbooks: Bhattacherjee’s (2012) Social science research: Principles, methods, and practices and Blackstone’s (2012) Principles of sociological inquiry: Qualitative and quantitative methods. I first used Bhattacherjee’s book in a graduate-level criminal justice research methods course. I chose the book because it was an open educational resource that covered the major topics of my course. While I found the book adequate for my purposes, the business school perspective did not always fit with my criminal justice focus. I decided to rewrite the textbook for undergraduate and graduate students in my criminal justice research methods courses. As I researched other open- educational resources for teaching social science research methods, I found Blackstone’s book, which covered more of the social science and qualitative methods perspectives that I wanted to incorporate into my book.

As a result, this open-access textbook includes some content from both previous works along with my own additions based on my extensive experience and expertise in conducting qualitative and quantitative research in social science settings and in mentoring students through the research process. My Ph.D. is in Sociology, and I currently teach undergraduates and graduate students in a criminal justice program at Weber State University. Throughout my career, I have conducted and published the results of research projects using a variety of methods, including surveys, case studies, in-depth interviews, participant observation, content analysis, and secondary analysis of quantitative data. I have also mentored undergraduates in conducting community-based research projects using many of these same methods with the addition of focus groups and program evaluations.