Courses

Criminal Justice

0401. Decision Making in Criminal Justice   (3 s.h.)

Core Course. Conceptualizes criminal justice as a series of interrelated decision stages. Examines organizational, legal and research issues related to each decision stage.

0402. Research Methods in Criminal Justice   (3 s.h.)

Core course. Assumes prior familiarity with basic methodology and statistics. Prepares students to conduct criminal justice research and evaluation. Covers topics of causality, reliability, validity, and quasi-experimental methods.

0404. Law and Social Order   (3 s.h.)

Core Course. Examines legal and constitutional foundations of criminal justice through legal analyses of crime, punishment and protections afforded individuals facing deprivation of liberty.

0405. Fundamental Statistical Issues in Analysis of Criminal Justice Data   (3 s.h.)

Core Course. Introduces criminal justice graduate students to simple and multiple regression analyses in criminal justice research. Extended treatment of the detection of non-normal data through the use of graphical and statistical techniques, and the statistical implications of highly non-normal data that are encountered in many areas of criminal justice. Clarifies relations between statistical assumptions, results, and use of results for decision making purposes.

0406. Theories of Crime and Deviance   (3 s.h.)

Core Course. The goal of the course is to provide an appraisal of the foundations for understanding criminal behavior. Topics cover motivational theories; dialectical perspectives; epistemological issues; psychoanalytic, biological, and ecological approaches; differential association and anticipation, stress, social learning, control, and labeling theories about crime.

0475. Independent Study   (3 s.h.)

Prerequisite: Requires prior permission of instructor.

Permits individualized study of a specific topic in consultation with a faculty member. Not intended as a substitute for any required course.

0501. The American Criminal Justice Process   (3 s.h.)

Analysis of the criminal justice process, from the onset of police investigation through the decision of whether to revoke parole. Includes examination of the system's theoretical, political, and legal bases; the system's internal and external relationships, including its role vis-à-vis other forms of social control; accountability of the system to the public and other institutions; significant theoretical, policy, and administrative issues; related research.

0510. Court Processes and Administration   (3 s.h.)

Reviews current court issues (e.g., delay case management, judicial selection, docketing, plea bargaining, sentencing). Emphasizes recent innovations in the U.S., their implications and effects.

0520. Correctional Philosophy and Administration   (3 s.h.)

Reviews historical and philosophical bases of U.S. corrections and examines current issues (e.g., jail/prison crowding, alternatives to incarceration, privatization of corrections, electronic monitoring).

0530. Issues in Law Enforcement   (3 s.h.)

Examines recent development in community relations, use of deadly force, patrol experiments, and court decisions that bear on police procedures.

0540. Policy and Practice in Juvenile Justice   (3 s.h.)

Covers history of reform in juvenile justice, underlying ideologies and current debates concerning treatment (or punishment) decisions.

0550. Aggression and Violence   (3 s.h.)

Covers definitions of violence and proposed responses to concerns ranging from violent street crime to international terrorism.

0551. Socialization and Family Influences on Criminal Behavior   (3 s.h.)

Cover a variety of theories about development of antisocial behavior and consider such issues as effects of being reared in single-parent families, child abuse, parental alcoholism, and use of specific disciplinary techniques.

0560. Critical Issues in Justice Reform   (3 s.h.)

Analyzes reforms in criminal justice processes proposed by courts, legislature, executive branch agencies or communities (e.g., sentencing, prison management).

0570. Special Topics Seminar   (3 s.h.)

Analyzes current policy issues from a range of perspectives.

0580. Seminar in Criminal Justice Policy   (3 s.h.)

Covers significant literature and research models pertaining to examination of criminal justice policy.

0600. Thesis Research   (3 s.h.)

0601. Research Seminar in Criminal Justice   (3 s.h.)

Fulfills part of the research requirements for the student working toward completion of the Ph.D. Involves advanced reading and research in areas agreed upon by the Ph.D. student and professor. Includes group and individual meetings. Aim is an advanced research paper by the student that may focus in an area related to the proposed doctoral research.

0602. Advanced Methods II   (3 s.h.)

The course offers a broad coverage of social science research issues comprising philosophical, theoretical and methodological perspectives. Its goal is to prepare students to examine each of these aspects of research and to develop competency and applied skills across a wide range of methodological approaches. The course emphasizes the fact that research can be shaped by many different paradigms each of which can utilize one or more of the wide array of available methodologies. Emphasizes the ‘how to' of research rather than a more abstract discussion of topics. It incorporates tools and techniques used in both quantitative and qualitative approaches and requires students to engage in practical research design, development and analysis. The course is presented at an advanced level and assumes that students have a solid grounding in basic research methods. Students will be required to use computer packages such as SPSS and Excel.

0605. Advanced Statistical Issues in Criminal Justice Data: Survival Models and Time Series Analysis   (3 s.h.)

Focuses on multivariate statistical techniques particularly important in criminal justice research questions concerned with prediction or evaluation. Introduction to survival models and time series analyses, widely used evaluation and prediction tools. Learn conceptual orientations of these techniques and practice running them.

0630. Criminal Victimization and Criminal Justice   (3 s.h.)

Examines the nature and scope of criminal victimization from two perspectives: primary victimization at the hands of the criminal defendant and secondary victimization as a function of the response of the criminal justice system and larger society. Emphasis in each instance is upon data and measurement of levels, causes, correlates, and consequences of major forms of the phenomenon, as a basis for development and critical analysis of victimization theory, policy, and practice.

0631. Enviromental Justice   (3 s.h.)

0632. Geographic Perspectives on Crime   (3 s.h.)

Spatial distribution of crime and criminals is examined in relation to the geographic processes which influence that distribution. Processes include regional cultural transition, economic deprivation, housing segregation and spatial decision-making. Comparative examination of U.S. metropolitan areas, although the emphasis is on Philadelphia.

0640. Criminal Justice Organizations: Structure, Process and Change   (3 s.h.)

Provides the criminal justice graduate student with a grounding in organization theory, managerial practice and ideology, and planned change in justice system organizations. As such the course is designed to 1) examine extant organizational theories and models developed in other disciplines, 2) apply these models and theories in the explanation of justice system agency functioning (or the lack thereof), and 3) consider the role of various forms of organizational analysis in changing justice system organizations.

0750. Directed Research   (Variablecredit s.h.)

0760. Directed Readings   (Variablecredit s.h.)

0799. Preliminary Examination Preparation   (Variablecredit s.h.)

0899. Pre-Dissertation Research   (Variablecredit s.h.)

0989. Doctoral Dissertation Research   (1-9 s.h.)

0999. Doctoral Dissertation Research   (Variablecredit s.h.)