Criminal Justice

Career opportunities include federal, state, and local law enforcement, institutional and community-based corrections and treatment alternatives, family and social services, criminal investigations, juvenile services, probation and parole, and careers in military justice.

Graduates of the Criminal Justice/Corrections – AAS will have demonstrated:

• The foundation knowledge of criminal justice core concepts and methods
  • Crucial steps and persons involved in American criminal justice
  • Similarities and differences in adult and juvenile criminal justice handling and the law
  • Key terms and legal terminology used in the study of crime and delinquency
  • Theories of crime and delinquency causation
  • Issues and methods of criminal investigation
  • Basic tenets of criminal law
  • Constitutional legal rights afforded criminal defendants
  • Ethical issues in criminal justice
  • Historical, legal, social and natural science methods used to study crime
• The knowledge of information literacy as it relates to criminal justice
  • Identification, accessing and interpretation of major sources of crime data
  • Identification, accessing and interpretation of legal resources
  • Criminal agency data
  • Career information
  • Basic library, research and communication skills
  • Ability to understand, summarize, analyze and critically evaluate sources of criminal justice information
• The knowledge of career opportunities in the field of criminal justice
  • Criminal justice job descriptions, requirements and benefits
  • Career opportunities in law enforcement, courts, corrections, juvenile justice, forensic sciences
  • Educational transfer opportunities in criminal justice
• Critical thinking, oral and written communication skills
  • General communication skills
  • Examples of specific technical writing required in the field of criminal justice
  • Instruction in and assessment of critical thinking skills