Ex-Offenders and Educational Equal Access: Doctoral Programs in Criminology and Criminal Justice

The utility of citation-based quality assessments

Characteristics of 13 doctoral programs in criminal justice and criminology are examined. Features described include the age and size of the programs, representation of women and minorities among faculty and graduate students, admissions requirements and admissions activity, financial support available to graduate students, and characteristics of the curricula. Criminal justice doctoral programs vary widely on each of these characteristics.

Prior research has suggested factors such as university and program ranking may impact master’s students’ decisions to attend particular doctoral programs. One source of this information is likely their graduate director. However, sparse research exists on graduate directors’ referrals to doctoral education and specific programs. To address this gap in the literature, we surveyed 143 criminal justice graduate directors at masters-granting institutions across the U.S. Respondents were asked about the factors that influence their decisions to (1) recommend students to doctoral education, (2) recommend specific Ph.D. programs, (3) their perceptions of the quality of education at specific programs and (4) their likelihood of referring students to those doctoral programs. Results suggest that the referral decision is a multi-faceted concept. Findings also indicate that master’s program graduate directors’ ranking of criminal justice Ph.D. programs diverge from popular rankings of similar Ph.D. programs. Implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

There has long been a debate about what, if anything, differentiates criminology and criminal justice programs. Both grew about of sociology and, to a lesser degree, law and political science. In the 1970s and early 1980s, debate arose over the scope and limits of the two. That debate has faded today but the perceptions emanating from that controversy linger. The current study seeks to reopen the debate and invite disciplinary reflection. Two sources of data are analyzed: (1) doctoral program curricula and (2) articles in the top-tier disciplinary journals. Results show criminology courses are well represented in criminal justice doctoral programs, while criminal justice courses constitute a comparatively smaller part of criminology doctoral programs. In top-tier disciplinary journals, criminology articles are more prevalent than criminal justice articles. Plausible explanations are advanced. It is hoped that these findings provide a new springboard for further research and discussion that will lead to a better understanding and delineation of these allied disciplines.

Law-related courses, and more broadly the place of the law and lawyers in criminal justice programs, are the focus of this paper. I believe that the importance of the law, the study of legal issues, and the way in which the law is taught in criminal justice programs is in need of significant refinement. We need more law-related courses in the curriculum, at both the undergraduate and graduate level, more PhDs with an understanding of the law, and more legal research done by criminal justice scholars. In the pages that follow, I make the case for changing how we approach the study of law in criminal justice undergraduate and graduate programs.

For several decades, researchers have examined the important role that Department Chairs serve in their respective universities as well as the challenges they encounter in their positions. However, relatively little research has explored the fundamental role that Graduate Directors serve in their positions as well as the duties they carry out and challenges they face. Researchers have yet to examine graduate directors in criminal justice and criminology programs in the same manner. Thus, this research investigation seeks to fill this gap. Utilizing an Internet survey of graduate directors in criminal justice and criminology programs nationwide, this research investigation examines the duties carried out, the challenges faced, and compensation received by those serving as Graduate Directors in criminal justice and criminology programs. Additionally, this investigation explores how COVID-19 impacted their duties, trends in enrollment, the marketing tools utilized, and the respondent recommendations to improve Graduate Director positions. The implications for future research and policy implications are discussed.

Other than through its ties to scholarship on the sociology of higher education, the topic of female scholar productivity appears to be timely in light of the gender transformation underway in criminology and criminal justice (e.g., the majority of CCJ graduate students are female, and the CCJ professorate will be majority female if admission patterns hold). Toward this end, the present study provides an examination of the employment patterns and publication trajectories of 88 female scholars who graduated between 1996 and 2006 from 18 North American doctoral programs in criminology and criminal justice. In addition, the study employs a subset of career concepts (frequency, specialization, seriousness, and co‐offending) to the publication records of a group of 20 graduates we call “academic stars” to more fully explicate trends and issues related to the dissemination of knowledge in leading academic journals. Findings suggest that research productivity varies depending on the measure utilized (e.g., type of outlet; standardized or unstandardized by time‐in‐profession; weighted or unweighted by coauthorship patterns). Different measures of central tendency provide different snapshots of institutional output. Publication frequencies are found to be greater among scholars employed at Carnegie high‐research‐intensity universities. Regarding research type‐mix, the stars tend to be more eclectic than specialized. Future directions for research are also discussed.

Over the past decades, there has been sizeable growth in Master and Ph.D. graduate programs in criminology and criminal justice. With this growth, some research has emerged regarding the experiences of graduate students in these disciplines. However, researchers have not explored the decision-making process behind why these graduate students chose to pursue their education further in their respective discipline or at their selected institution, what their experiences have been in graduate school (e.g. challenges, mentoring, support from Graduate Director, fellow students, or faculty), and what their plans are post-graduation. Utilizing an Internet survey of graduate students in criminal justice and criminology programs nationwide, this research investigation explores how graduate students found and chose their program, examines their experiences in their program, and reports on their recommendations for improving the experiences of graduate students in criminal justice and criminology programs. The implications for future research and policy implications are discussed.

Unlike prior studies that have examined the research productivity to develop various rank-order metrics of particular scholars or institutions, we seek to determine ways in which criminology and criminal justice faculty at the top 21 doctoral programs publish their research. To account for a potential diversity in faculty publication productivity, our study considers various outlets for faculty publications—journal articles, books, and book chapters—and develops composite profiles of publication productivity. Our intention is not to rank faculty and determine academic stars, but to distinguish groups of faculty similar in their patterns of faculty productivity. We analyze the publications of over 90% of all tenured and tenure-track faculty employed by the top 21 U.S. doctoral programs in criminology and criminal justice. Our latent profile analysis yielded five distinct profiles of productivity among the faculty in the top doctoral programs. Our study reaffirms the need for the use of multidimensional measures of publication productivity.

This article focuses on three areas (financial aid, mentorship, and alienation) that affect the professional socialization of African-American doctoral students in criminology and criminal justice. The respondents to a mailed questionnaire provide information about their experience in these three areas. Although the students indicate that they are receiving financial support and experience in teaching and research, and some report that they are being mentored, they are also alienated to some extent by their programs. This article identifies the ways in which these areas may distract African-Americans from successfully completing terminal degrees. It also offers ideas about professional socialization that may increase the success rate of most graduate students.

Professional development has numerous meanings. It varies from discipline to discipline and from program to program and often from individual to individual. In 1960s and 1970s, the criminal justice system came under intense scrutiny for their responses to Civil Rights and Vietnam War demonstrations. In response, the federal government allocated millions of dollars into the training, education, and professional development of criminal justice employees. The primary focus at that time was on preparing undergraduate and graduate students for work in the field of criminal justice. As academic programs in criminology and criminal justice have evolved, the need for a new model of professional development has emerged that facilitates the mentoring of young scholars and educators. More recently, doctoral programs in our field have turned to structuring, in various forms, the professional development of future scholars. This article discusses the evolving nature of teaching, training, and professional development in criminology/criminal justice education and provides a model for a doctoral-level course in professional development.

The quality of doctoral programs in deviance, criminology, and criminal justice: An empirical assessment

Part II - List of Graduate Programs in Criminal Justice and Criminology in the United States, Alphabetical by School Name: (Information taken directly from school/department websites)

Part III - List of Graduate Programs in Criminal Justice and Criminology in Canada, Alphabetical by School Name: (Information taken directly from school/department websites)

The initial transition to graduate school provides a critical opportunity for promoting a positive educational experience among incoming students. This study discusses the importance of this transition and then describes a novel student-led orientation approach to facilitating successful entry of new students into criminology and criminal justice graduate degree programs. Results from an evaluation of this approach are presented. Analyses of focus group and student survey data indicate that graduate students matriculating into a criminology and criminal justice program in a southern state felt welcomed and found the information, guidance, and social networks that they developed to be helpful. At the same time, students identified ways the orientation could be improved for future cohorts. A student-led orientation, along with evaluation of it, provides a promising strategy for criminology and criminal justice graduate programs to create positive educational and professionalization experiences for their students.