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Criminology, Law and Society Ph.D. program

​​ The Ph.D. program in Criminology, Law and Society is ranked #2 in the US News and World Reports rankings. The program focuses on the causes, manifestations, and consequences of crime; the impacts of crime on society; social regulation; the civil justice system; the social and cultural contexts of law; and the interactive effects of law and society. With high-caliber faculty and an interdisciplinary perspective, the program aims to develop students’ theoretical and methodological sophistication to prepare them for faculty positions at major universities and colleges or for research, training, and administrative work in the justice system.   

Program Overview

In this doctoral program, students must pass nine (9) required courses and four (4) electives, all with a grade of B or higher. For a description of the following courses and others, please visit the UCI Course Catalogue .

Students are also required to complete a Second Year Project, pass comprehensive examinations (comps), prepare & defend a dissertation proposal, and prepare & defend a dissertation.

Second Year Project/Master's Thesis

Beginning in their first year, students initiate independent research projects under faculty supervision. Approaches to research vary widely and may include questionnaire and survey analysis, systematic field observation, computer simulation, archival searches, ethnographies, oral histories, and legal analysis. This project is further expanded on and completed during the second year. This Second Year Project is designed to introduce students to developing their own research projects and writing for an academic audience. The report of the Second Year Project should be comparable in scope and format to articles that appear in leading journals within the field of criminology, law and society. Each project is evaluated and approved by the advisor and one other faculty member.

Students may submit the written report of their Second Year Project as a Master's Thesis for an M.A. in Social Ecology. For the Ph.D. degree, however, an M.A. is not required, and most students move directly to the completion of the doctoral requirements.

Comprehensive Exams

The comprehensive examination (comps) is an untimed take-home written exam consisting of two essays, to be completed in the third year of graduate study. The goal of comps is to allow graduate students to demonstrate mastery of major theoretical, substantive, and methodological issues in both criminology and law & society. The examination consists of two sections – criminology, and law & society. Beginning in 2021, students must complete the exam by the first day of classes in the Winter Quarter of their third year (adjusted for any Leaves of Absence), and must pass all sections of the exam by the last day of classes in Winter Quarter of their third year (adjusted for any Leaves of Absence). Students who do not pass one or both sections on the first attempt will retake the failed section(s) in the subsequent quarter. Students are allowed to take the exam twice, but must pass all sections according to this timeline.

Dissertation

During the fourth year of study, students draft and defend a proposal for dissertation research. The proposal is developed under the guidance of a faculty advisor, and clearly presents the research questions, theories, and methods which will inform the doctoral dissertation project. Once students complete the proposal, they must defend the proposal to a committee comprised of the faculty advisor and four other faculty members. Upon approval of the defense, the student will advance to candidacy for the Ph.D. Students generally complete the proposal defense by the end of the fourth year.

Once students have advanced to candidacy, they spend their remaining time at UCI completing data collection and analysis for their dissertation. Following the completion of the written dissertation, students must orally defend their project to a committee comprised of the faculty advisor and two other faculty members. The dissertation defense usually occurs in the fifth or sixth year. Upon passage of the oral defense and approval of the committee, the student has completed all of the requirements of the Ph.D. program.

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Program Learning Outcomes

Graduate Student Emphases

UCI offers graduate students the opportunity to earn emphases in several substantive areas. Many of our students earn one or more of these emphases, and several of our faculty are associated with the emphases-granting departments.

Asian American Studies

This graduate emphasis is a formal component of graduate studies at the University of California, Irvine, in addition to the fulfillment of requirements towards the Ph.D. or M.F.A. degree in an array of fields in the Schools of Humanities, Social Sciences, Social Ecology, and the Arts. Designed to complement existing graduate degree-granting programs by providing interdisciplinary training in Asian American Studies, this particular specialty is comprised of four courses: two foundation courses introducing theories, methods, and historical and contemporary special topics in Asian American Studies; one elective course in Asian American Studies; and one related elective course in a student’s specific discipline or area of study. Learn more...

Critical Theory Emphasis

The Critical Theory Emphasis (CTE) graduate specialty is the curricular arm of UCI's Critical Theory Institute (CTI). Scholars of Critical Theory explore and develop theoretical models to analyze and critique cultural forms from literature and art to more general systems of information, social relations, and symbolic categories of race, gender and ethnic identity. The goal of the CTE is to promote the study of shared assumptions, problems and commitments of the various discourses in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Learn more...

Graduate Feminist Emphasis

The Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies at UCI offers a graduate emphasis in Feminist Studies for students pursuing Ph.D. or Master's programs across the campus. Participating in the GFE provides students with advanced interdisciplinary training in Feminist Studies, and offers them an opportunity to become part a network of feminist scholars at UCI and beyond. GFE students are subscribed in our email listserv , which features current job openings, fellowship information, and important news about our upcoming events. Learn more...

Law, Society and Culture Emphasis

The Center for Law, Society and Culture sponsors the LSC Emphasis. This concentration is designed a) to instill an intellectual ethic on inter -disciplinarity among participating students early in their training and b) to create trans -disciplinary communities of emerging socio-legal scholars whose intellectual development is enhanced by formal and informal exchange across diverse fields. In the spring of each year, students in their first through third years of graduate study are invited to apply to the Emphasis, which is composed of 4 inter-connected components: 1) a year-long theory and research seminar, with each quarter taught by one faculty member from a different school at UCI; (2) cross-disciplinary mentorship and advising; (3) ongoing professionalization opportunities and responsibilities; and (4) a culminating intellectual project.  Each student is assigned a faculty mentor outside of his or her home department and will meet with that mentor on a monthly basis to discuss the student's ongoing research. Learn more...

Race and Justice Studies Emphasis

Students from any UCI state-supported graduate or professional program, including J.D., Master’s and M.F.A. students, are eligible to apply to the Emphasis in Race and Justice Studies (RJS), housed in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society (CLS). The Race and Justice Studies Emphasis is comprised of four requirements that promote inclusive excellence in graduate training at UCI: (1) A first-year mentorship proseminar offered over three quarters by faculty from across campus whose research and teaching foster inclusive excellence; (2) one RJS-approved course offered under the supervision of the Emphasis; (3) a writing seminar in which a paper developed through the Emphasis will be workshopped and revised toward publication; and (4) a public presentation which translates the student’s RJS-influenced research for an interdisciplinary audience. Learn more...

Visual Studies

The Emphasis in Visual Studies offers a focus on Visual Studies available to Ph.D. and M.F.A. students in all departments at UCI. Satisfactory completion of this concentration is certified by the Graduate Advisor in Visual Studies and is noted in the student's dossier. Learn more...

Research Centers

Students in the Ph.D. program often work with various Research Centers, including the Center for Evidence-Based Corrections , the Center in Law, Society and Culture , the Center for Psychology and Law , the Newkirk Center , the Irvine Lab for the Study of Space and Crime , and the Metropolitan Futures Initiative .

Financial Support

Students in the Ph.D. program have a variety of financial support options. The most common sources of support are Teaching Assistantships and Research Assistantships.

Research Assistantship. Many students work with faculty on research projects funded by external grants or university monies. As with Teaching Assistants, RAs generally work for up to 20 hours per week and are involved in a wide variety of research activities (e.g., data collection and analysis, article preparation, etc.). Compensation for RAs is roughly equivalent to that for a Teaching Assistant, and covers fees and tuition.

Teaching Assistantship. Ph.D. students in CLS are eligible for 12 quarters of support as a Teaching Assistant (TA), making this the most common means of financial support. TAs work up to 20 hours a week, are responsible for assisting the professor with many common classroom tasks (e.g., creating exams, grading papers, etc.), assist students understand course material and meet course requirements, and experience the opportunity to practice the art of teaching (usually through discussion sections and/or guest lecturing). To maintain their eligibility, students must be in good academic standing and must have a satisfactory record as a Teaching Assistant . Some students may even receive a TAship after this 12-quarter period (subject to CLS and Graduate Divivsion approval). A Teaching Assistantship is not only an important means of financial support (a monthly salary plus fees and tuition coverage), but the work also serves a vital role in training Ph.D. candidates, particularly those who intend to pursue academic careers.

Additional funding is available through student loans, departmental and university fellowships, and outside funding sources. In addition to support during the academic year, students are often able to secure research grants from the Department for the summer. These grants are allotted on the basis of academic standing and financial need.

Award Opportunities

Listed below are the CLS Department awards current students have the opportunitiy to be nominated or apply for.

• Arnold Binder Award
• Dickman Award
• Gil Geis Award
• Kitty Calavita Award
• Michelle Smith-Pontell Award
• Peer Mentoring Award

Graduate Student Housing

A number of housing alternatives are available for graduate students at UCI. Two apartment complexes and a residence hall are available exclusively for graduate students and those with families who wish to live on campus. In addition, there are many off-campus options, including apartments/houses at the beach or apartment complexes just across the street from the university. Due to their affordability and convenience, more than half of our graduate students choose to live on campus.

Among the on-campus options are Verano Place Apartments, Palo Verde Apartments, and Vista del Campo/VdC Norte. Verano Place includes 862 units which are one-, two-, or three-bedroom unfurnished apartments. Palo Verde is designed solely for graduate students and post-doctoral students, and consists of 204 apartments that range from studio to three-bedroom apartments. Vista del Campo is a privately owned and managed apartment community located on the UCI campus, offering furnished apartments to single students who are sophomores, juniors, seniors, or graduate students. For information on all of these housing options, please visit the UCI Housing website .

For more information, please contact:

Irice Castro Assistant Director of Graduate Student Services [email protected] 949-824-1874

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Graduate Programs

Master of arts in criminal justice.

The Master of Arts in Criminal Justice is designed to serve the growing number of individuals in the criminal justice system who desire post baccalaureate education, as well as those in more traditional public and private employment who may wish to acquire further education in criminal justice.

After completion of all required courses, students choose either the thesis culminating experience or the comprehensive exam culminating experience. The thesis is designed for students who intend to pursue graduate studies beyond the M.A. level and those who are interested in conducting specific research projects in criminal justice. The comprehensive exam is geared for those with administratice and management goals. 

The program can serve a variety of student interests. It has been designed with a limited prerequisite requirement to enable students with baccalaureate degrees in related fields such as psychology, administration, anthropology, sociology or social sciences to enroll along with students with undergraduate degrees in criminal justice.

All of our required courses are offered online to accommodate various student schedules.  There are a limited number of electives that may be held in the classroom. The MA degree is generally meant to be completed fully online. 

National Recognition

2023 :  Ranked #23 for the “Best Online Master's Degree in Criminal Justice” (UniversityHQ.org)

2022 : Ranked #34 in “Best Online Master’s in Criminal Justice Programs” (U.S. News & World Report)

2022 : Ranked #32 “Best Online Master’s in Criminal Justice” (OnlineMastersDegrees.org - OMD)

2022 : Ranked #15 in “Best Online Master’s in Criminal Justice Programs for Nationally Recognized Faculty” (Intelligent.com)

2022 : Ranked #8 in “Best Master’s in Criminal Justice Degree Programs – Best Value” (Intelligent.com)

2021 : Ranked #4 in “15 Best Online MA Programs in Criminal Justice, 2021” (Best Value Schools)

2021 : Ranked #38 in "Best Online Graduate Criminal Justice Programs" (U.S. News and World Report)

2020 : Ranked #18 in “Top 50 Criminal Justice Degree Programs for 2020” (Intelligent.com)

2020 : Ranked #35 in “Best Online Graduate Criminal Justice Programs” (U.S. News and World Report)

2019 : Ranked #30 in “Best Online Graduate Criminal Justice Programs” (U.S. News and World Report)

2018 : Ranked #21 in “Best Online Masters in Criminal Justice Degree Program, 2018” (College Choice)

2018 : Ranked #34 in “Best Online Graduate Criminal Justice Programs” (U.S. News and World Report)

2018 : Ranked #39 in 'The Top 50 Institutions for Online Master of Criminal Justice Degree Programs' (Master's Programs Guide)

2017 : Ranked #15 in “The 25 Best Online Master of Criminal Justice Degree Programs” (The Best Schools)

2016 : Ranked #4 in “Most Affordable online Master’s in Criminal Justice Program” (Collegevaluesonline)

2016 : Ranked #12 in “Best Online Masters in Criminal Justice Degree Program, 2016” (College Choice)

2015 : Ranked #3 in “50 Best value Colleges for a Criminal Justice Degree, 2015” (Best Value Schools)

2015 : Ranked # 17 in “50 Best Online Criminal Justice Programs, 2015” (Super Scholar)

2015 : Ranked #20 in “Best Online Graduate Criminal Justice Programs” (U.S. News and World Report)

Program Learning Outcomes

At the end of the Master of Arts in Criminal Justice, students will have:

• Acquired an in-depth awareness of the criminal justice system and its components.
• Developed a working knowledge of research methods as used in the social sciences, with a particular emphasis on the basic skills necessary to conduct (and direct) research in criminal justice agencies.
• Developed an ability to employ advanced statistical tools, especially as they are applied in criminological research.
• An ability to apply the primary concepts and assumptions of the traditional and contemporary theories of crime.

The department has a highly qualified faculty that is nationally recognized. They received doctorates from the most prestigious programs in the field and they consistently publish in leading journals reporting on cutting-edge research. We also work with a number of criminal justice agencies in the region and nationally including the Riverside Probation Department, San Bernardino Probation Department, San Bernardino Police Department, Ontario Police Department, Fontana Police Department, Colton Police Department, and San Bernardino County Police Chiefs and Sheriff’s Association. Additionally, the department operates two research centers: the Criminal Justice Research Center and the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

View our Faculty & Staff section .

PhD in Criminal Justice Programs in California

When you think about the complex issues of crime, justice, and safety in California, it’s clear there are few easy answers. California is made up of hundreds of communities, each requiring criminal justice experts. If you are ready to take the next step in your career or transitioning to criminal justice, a PhD may be for you.

What Can I Do With My PhD in Criminal Justice in California?

Like many states, California has at times suffered unsustainable rates of prison growth. California has reversed that slightly in recent years, with a 1% decrease in incarceration rates in 2016 ( Patch , 2018).

While crime rates are decreasing across the country, some of California’s cities aren’t following this trend. San Francisco is ranked number one in the country for property crime ( SF Chronicle , 2018).

With a criminal justice PhD, you may have the qualifications you need for new justice careers. A judicial law clerk position may allow you to work with high profile cases. California judicial law clerks bring in an average salary of $58,160 per year ( Bureau of Labor Statistics , 2017). With an anticipated 6% increase in job openings across the country through 2026, the job outlook is favorable ( CareerOneStop , 2017).

You may also consider academic positions. Between 2016 and 2026, CareerOneStop anticipates a 10% increase in demand for criminal justice professors (2017). The median income for this career is $92,120 per year (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017).

Take a look at our list of PhD criminal justice programs below to find schools near you.

What Will It Take to Earn My Criminal Justice Graduate Degree in California?

Before selecting a PhD program, you must look at your educational background. If you have a bachelor’s degree, you need to enroll in a program that combines master’s degree courses and PhD courses. This generally involves completing over 70 credits. If you have a master’s degree already, you may consider PhD programs that require 40 to 50 credits.

Most criminal justice degrees in California cost between $8600 per semester and $16,000 per semester. Your tuition rate is based on the school you choose and your residency status. PhD programs differ from other degrees because they often provide funding to students, with the hope that the students they accept and fund will produce research that brings attention to the university.

In exchange for lower or waived tuition, you may have to work as a teaching assistant or research assistant for up to 20 hours per week. If you concentrate on research throughout your education, you may also qualify for research grants from local and federal organizations.

Roughly the first half of your PhD program should focus on classroom courses, theory, and seminars. At this point in your education, you may enroll in courses like:

• Law and Society
• Street Ethnography
• Qualitative Criminological Analysis
• Consequences of Imprisonment
• Law and Morality
• Juvenile Delinquency
• Eyewitness Testimony

Once your classroom requirements are behind you, you move on to your dissertation and your comprehensive exam. The exam covers a range of criminal justice theories, issues, and laws. Your dissertation should relate to your area of concentration or your future career plans. You earn your PhD in criminal justice in California after successfully defending your thesis to a panel of PhDs.

If you long for a career that empowers you to improve the criminal justice system and make a difference in people’s lives, a criminal justice PhD may be the first step. Use our list of programs below to contact top criminal justice schools in California for more information.

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Criminal Justice

Berkeley Law is an ideal place to study criminal justice. The faculty includes top criminologists, renowned experts in domestic and international law, first-rate practitioners, and scholars who bring an interdisciplinary approach to the most pressing problems of the day. Students gain important practical experience through our Death Penalty Clinic, East Bay Community Law Center, Policy Advocacy Clinic, Samuelson Law and Technology Clinic, and Domestic Violence Practicum, as well as our Field Placements, Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects, and a host of advocacy classes.

Berkeley Law takes full advantage of the rich opportunities in the Bay Area. The nine-county region offers countless possibilities for prosecution and defense field placements and careers in local, state, and federal agencies, as well as policy work for non-profit organizations.

Berkeley Law has also launched a new Criminal Law & Justice Center , with former San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin as the founding executive director. The center will be a research and advocacy hub that fosters research collaboration among faculty members and others, enhances law students’ training and practice opportunities, and strengthens connections between the university and the outside world.

• Death Penalty Clinic
• Policy Advocacy Clinic
• Journal of Criminal Law
• Clean Slate Services (EBCLC)  
• Education Defense & Justice for Youth Services (EBCLC)
• Student Initiated Legal Services Projects
• Criminal Field Placements
• Board of Advocates
• Domestic Violence Practicum

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‘A Superb Teacher and a Great Scholar’: Professor Andrea Roth Awarded New Faculty Chair

Roth, a groundbreaking scholar of criminal law and evidence in an increasingly technology-driven world, is the first Barry Tarlow Chancellor’s Chair in Criminal Justice.

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Online Doctorate in Criminal Justice

Join a collaborative approach to a criminal justice degree.

Take a leadership role in our changing society with PennWest’s online Doctorate in Criminal Justice.

Built on PennWest California’s unique graduate program, this online program focuses on professional development and practical approaches to contemporary criminal justice issues.

The program includes one five-day summer residency on campus (or virtually) followed by two years of part-time, online study. During this time, you will strengthen your skills with in-depth analysis and policy evaluation and implementation, and you will deepen your understanding of real-world concerns such as federal consent decrees, police use of force, wrongful convictions and reducing recidivism. After passing a comprehensive exam, you will develop a doctoral research portfolio based on theory and applied research relevant to your career.

You’ll graduate with the skills you need to advance as a professional in this high-demand field.

View courses

Completed Application Deadline:

• Summer 2024 - January 18, 2024
• Summer 2025 - January 21, 2025 ‍

Learn from expert faculty who understand modern criminal justice issues because they have real-world experience that supports their lectures.

Earn this advanced degree while you continue to work as a professional in your field.

This program is 100% online with a 1-week residency.

The DCJ program is the first regionally accredited professional doctorate in criminal justice in the country.

100% online with 1-week residency

Graduate Admissions [email protected] 724-938-4187

Start Terms:

Careers and salaries.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs for those with doctorates in Criminal Justice are expected to grow faster than average over the next 10 years.

What Can I Do With a Doctorate in Criminal Justice?

• Teach future generations of criminal justice professionals.
• Work in the fields of law enforcement, behavioral or forensic science.
• Create policy on the federal or local level.
• Advance in your career.

Graduate Outcomes

• Develop applied decision-making and organizational leadership skills that can be used to address a variety of major contemporary issues in criminal justice.
• Develop cultural competence as applied to community policing and community relations.
• Support ethical practices in various criminal justice settings to ensure fairness and avoid consequences for organizations.
• Develop training needs assessment tools, the ability to deliver training programs effectively, and the skills to measure outcomes.
• Demonstrate an expert knowledge of the real-world practical aspects of substantive and procedural law relative to problems and issues in criminal justice.
• Apply criminal justice theory to a wide span of issues facing today’s criminal justice leaders.
• Assess critically the needs of the field of corrections and the juvenile justice system to ensure justice, minimize recidivism, and rehabilitate offenders and delinquent minors.
• Critique the criminal justice system in order to develop plans that can be implemented with the view toward achieving justice more often.
• Construct and execute criminal justice plans designed to minimize civil liability exposure with a particular emphasis on constitutional policing and corrections.
• Evaluate and interpret evidence-based data effectively and apply results in unique criminal justice-related situations.
• Appraise and select appropriate technologies for finding, retrieving, and analyzing evidence-based literature for the purpose of utilizing in a wide range of criminal justice settings.
• Prepare various forms of professional memoranda incorporating Bluebook-style citations and references for laws and other legal sources.

Admissions Requirements

• Earned master’s degree from a regionally accredited institution (or foreign equivalent) in criminal justice, criminology or a cognate discipline such as law (criminal justice-related LL.M.), anthropology, sociology, psychology or public administration. J.D. degree with demonstrated professional experience in criminal justice will also be considered.
• Minimum grade-point average of 3.50 (on a 4.00 scale) or foreign equivalent, with required graduate-level coursework in academic research methods, and graduate or undergraduate coursework in criminal law, criminal procedure, criminal justice, corrections and the court systems. Note: The prior criminal justice-related courses may be waived based upon actual training and experience.
• GPA between 3.00 and 3.49 with demonstrated patterns of significant professional accomplishment in the field of criminal justice
• Current resume, including academic and professional achievements
• Two professional recommendation letters
• Personal Statement
• Writing Sample

The Power of PennWest

PennWest’s three campuses, California, Clarion and Edinboro universities, have been delivering award-winning online programs for more than 20 years. You’ll graduate with a degree from Pennsylvania Western University, completely supported by the expertise and community of learners on our brick-and-mortar campuses.

Criminal Justice

Students prepare for impactful careers in criminal justice through a rigorous curriculum that blends substantive coursework with practical experiences in the field.

At UCLA Law, training in criminal justice extends well beyond a rigorous curriculum that is taught by top scholars and encompasses the procedural, doctrinal and theoretical roots of criminal law and the U.S. criminal justice system.

Experiential opportunities include courses in trial advocacy , where students hone their skills in fact analysis, client counseling and motion drafting, and the Criminal Defense Clinic , which collaborates with pro bono attorneys, nonprofit groups and public defender offices to make a positive difference in the community. Externships with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and other high-profile organizations offer invaluable work experience and an uncommon view into the role of lawyers in and around criminal courthouses.

Students also engage with UCLA Law's impactful centers of scholarship and advocacy. The Criminal Justice Program regularly partners with the Bail Project to effect meaningful change in communities burdened by unaffordable bail. And the Prison Law and Policy Program and Transnational Program on Criminal Justice host symposia and other events featuring luminaries in the field.

Criminal Justice Program

CJP is designed to help students build a foundation in criminal law while gaining meaningful experience.

Native Nations Law & Policy Center

This center advances Indian nations’ laws and institutions while promoting cultural resource protections.

Transnational Program on Criminal Justice

Performing scholarship on international and transnational criminal justice systems.

Our Faculty

Norman abrams.

Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus Acting Chancellor Emeritus

Shirin Bakhshay

Assistant Professor of Law

Stuart Banner

Norman Abrams Distinguished Professor of Law

Devon W. Carbado

The Honorable Harry Pregerson Professor of Law

Beth A. Colgan

Professor of Law

Sharon Dolovich

Professor of Law Faculty Director, UCLA Prison Law & Policy Program Director, UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project

Ingrid Eagly

Professor of Law Faculty Director, Criminal Justice Program

Máximo Langer

David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Professor of Law Director of the UCLA Transnational Program on Criminal Justice Faculty Director, Promise Institute for Human Rights Faculty Director, Promise Institute Europe

Joanna C. Schwartz

Professor of Law Faculty Director, David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy

Sherod Thaxton

Professor of Law Professor of African American Studies (by courtesy) Professor of Public Policy (by courtesy) Professor of Sociology (by courtesy)

Eugene Volokh

Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law

Courses and Clinics

Criminal procedure: habeas corpus, criminal law, advanced evidence objections and arguments, part-time externship: criminal, pay or stay: an exploration of the bail system in america, suing the police.

Aaron Littman talks to CalMatters about efforts to improve jails

Sunita patel is quoted by kqed about the major homelessness case at the supreme court, paul bergman is a guest on 'more life: the reentry podcast' to discuss interactions between people with a criminal record and law enforcement officers.

A conversation with Shane Lloyd, Chief Diversity Officer at Baker Tilly and Brenda Suttonwills, Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at UCLA School of Law

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Graduate Programs

The Master of Science in Criminology and Criminal Justice will expand and increase individual competency, develop and mature thought processes, aid in gaining insights into professional leadership and knowledge, permit an exchange between students and faculty, and further the spirit of research and scholarship to enhance professional and personal development. The curriculum is designed to offer a balance of theory and practical application that will prove to be challenging to students and useful in the field.

The M.S. provides the requisite knowledge and opportunity for individuals:

•  to be competitive for administrative positions in the courts, corrections, law enforcement, security, probation and parole;
•  to fill research positions in criminal justice agencies;
•  to pursue advanced degrees (J.D. or Ph.D.);
•  and to fill community college teaching positions in criminal justice.

The School of Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Emergency Management offers the M.S. in two formats:

A full-time traditional program on CSULB's campus that is designed to be completed in two-year academic years (i.e., this program is not designed for students with full-time jobs); and  

A part-time, online accelerated program for Justice Professionals

Regardless of whether a student pursues the traditional, on-campus master's degree program as a full-time student or pursues the accelerated M.S., the degree requirements are the same. The M.S. in Criminology and Criminal Justice requires 36-semester units of course work. The program consists of six core courses and a series of electives.

Please note transferring from the M.S. Online program to the Traditional M.S. program and vice versa AND enrollment in the M.S. Online program and taking classes in the Traditional M.S . program and vice versa are NOT permitted.

Program Learning Outcomes

The master’s degree program offered by the School of Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Emergency Management is designed to empower students as critical thinkers, ethical actors, and competent communicators concerning matters of crime and justice at the local, state, national, and international levels, to include, at degree-appropriate levels, the abilities to:

• Explain, connect, differentiate, apply, and critique theories of crime, criminal behavior, law, justice, and social control within social-cultural-political-racial contexts;
• Critically analyze and critique criminal justice policy, the operation of the criminal justice system, and their effects on individuals, communities, and societies, with particular attention to Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other People of Color;
• Apply the scientific method and analytic tools to interpret research and data related to crime and the criminal justice system to assess effectiveness of theories and policies;
• Use jurisprudential and ethical theories to analyze the role of diversity, culture, power, white supremacy, and racism on national and global criminological and criminal justice issues;
• Integrate theories, methods, and statistics to construct research questions, examine literature and data, and deduce/extrapolate implications for theory, policy, and research; and
• Demonstrate the ability to effectively develop and communicate ideas and arguments through written work and oral presentations.

Degree Requirements

The master’s degree in criminology & criminal justice requires 36 semester units of course work, a qualifying exam, and a capstone experience. 

Required Core Courses

All graduate students must complete the following core courses with a grade of A or B.   Graduate students earning a C or below in a core course will be required to retake the course for a passing grade.  The core courses are:

• CRJU 501: Proseminar and Professional Writing (3 units)
• CRJU 504: Criminological Theory (3 units)
• CRJU 520: Advanced Criminal Justice Research Methods (3 units)
• CRJU 525: Advanced Statistics for Criminal Justice (3 units)
• CRJU 530: Criminal Justice Ethics, Values, & Diversity (3 units); may be waived if completed similar course at undergraduate level.
• CRJU 535: Justice Policy (3 units)
• CRJU 555: Law and Social Control (3 units)

Successful Completion of the Qualifying Examination

Regardless of whether a student plans to write a thesis or take the comprehensive examination as his/her/their capstone experience, all students must take and pass the qualifying examination (also known as the “qualifier”) to advance to candidacy.  

The qualifier is comprised of between 120 and 150 multiple-choice questions.  It tests three subjects: criminological theory (CRJU 504), criminal justice research methods (CRJU 520), and applied statistics in criminal justice (CRJU 525). The qualifying exam is administered over the course of three hours.  

Details about the Qualifying Exam are contained in Part 5 of the Handbook.

Elective Courses

A. approved graduate-level electives:.

• CRJU 540: Substantive Criminal Law (3 units)
• CRJU 550: Constitutional Criminal Procedure (3 units)
• CRJU 601: Victimology (3 units)
• CRJU 604: Terrorism, Homeland Security, & Criminal Justice (3 units)
• CRJU 605: Crime Analysis (4 units)
• CRJU 606: Delinquency and the Juvenile Justice System (3 units)
• CRJU 608: Serial Killers & Psychopaths: The Psychology of the Criminal Mind (3 units)
• CRJU 609: Drugs and the Drug War (3 units)
• CRJU 621: Administration & Management of CJ Organizations (3 units)
• CRJU 623: Correctional Environments (3 units)
• CRJU 624: Successful Reentry: Theory and Practice (3 units)
• CRJU 631: Legal Issues in Criminal Justice (3 units)
• CRJU 640: Criminalistics:  Forensic Science in the Crime Laboratory (3 units)
• CRJU 641: Investigating High-Tech Crimes (3 units)
• CRJU 642: Forensic Psychology & the Criminal Justice System (3 units)
• CRJU 643: Forensic Pathology & the Medical-Legal Investigation of Death (3 units)
• CRJU 660: Introduction to Crime Analysis (3 Units)
• CRJU 661: Crime Analysis Technique 1: Social Network Analysis (4 units)
• CRJU 662: Crime Analysis Technique 2: Crime Mapping (3 units)
• CRJU 663: Crime Analysis Technique 3: Intelligence Analysis (3 units)
• CRJU 670: Qualitative Approaches to Criminal Justice Research (3 units)
• CRJU 690: Advanced Special Topics in Criminology & Criminal Justice (3 units)
• CRJU 691: Instructional Strategies for Criminal Justice Professionals (3 units)
• CRJU 692: Internship (6 units)
• CRJU 693: Internship (3 units)
• CRJU 695: Directed Readings/Independent Study in Criminal Justice (3 units)
• CRJU 697: Directed Research in Criminology & Criminal Justice (3 units)

With the consent of the Graduate Advisor, graduate-level courses in related disciplines (e.g., psychology, public policy, social work, sociology, political science, law) may also be used to satisfy the elective requirements for the master’s degree in criminology & criminal justice.

B.Undergraduate-Level Electives:

With the consent of the Graduate Advisor, a maximum of two (2) undergraduate courses, which require additional writing and research requirements for graduate students, may be used to satisfy the elective requirements for the master’s degree in criminology and criminal justice.

• CRJU 402: Crime and Inequality (3 units)
• CRJU 403: Comparative Criminal Justice and Transnational Crimes (3 units)
• CRJU 407: White Collar Crime (3 units)
• CRJU 410: Police Administration (3 units)
• CRJU 412: Criminal Investigation (3 units)
• CRJU 420: Legal Aspects of Corrections (3 units)
• CRJU 421: Probation, Parole, and Community Corrections (3 units)
• CRJU 422: Correctional Counseling (3 units)
• CRJU 430: Criminal Evidence and Trials [Mock Trial] (3 units)
• CRJU 450: Domestic Violence and the Criminal Justice System (3 units)
• GEOG 471: GIS for Justice (3 Units)

With the consent of the Graduate Advisor, 400-level courses in related disciplines (e.g., psychology, public policy, social work, sociology, political science, law), which require additional writing and research requirements for graduate students, may also be used to satisfy the elective requirements for the master’s degree in criminology & criminal justice.

Capstone Experience

Graduate students in the traditional master’s program have three options to complete the master’s in criminology & criminal justice. 

 Thesis Option – Graduate students may elect to take three (3) elective courses totaling at least nine (9) credit units and take both CRJU 694: Thesis I (3 units), and CRJU 698: Thesis II (3 units). Students who struggle with writing, conceptualizing, and paper organizing (i.e., earn less than an A in CRJU 501) may want to consider the Comprehensive Exam. Students who are on academic warning should not complete a thesis.

 Comprehensive Examination Option – Graduate students taking the comprehensive exam must take four (4) elective courses, totaling at least 12 credit units, enroll in CRJU 695 the semester they are taking the exam, and pass the comprehensive examination.

• Project Option –  This option is solely available to those graduate students concentrating their studies in Crime and Intelligence Analysis.  Those in this concentration must complete the five (5) elective courses required, totaling 16 units, and enroll in CRJU 697 to complete their Crime and Intelligence Analysis portfolio.

Concentration in Crime and Intelligence Analysis

The Crime and Intelligence Analysis concentration produces graduate-level trained crime and intelligence analysts. To concentrate in Crime & Intelligence Analysis, students must complete the 21 units of required core courses and the following six electives (19 units):

• CRJU 660: Introduction to Crime Analysis (3 Units)
• CRJU 661: Crime Analysis Technique 1: Social Network Analysis (4 units)
• CRJU 663: Crime Analysis Technique 3: Intelligence Analysis (3 units)
• CRJU 697: Directed Research in Criminology & Criminal Justice (2 units)

In CRJU 697, students complete an Analyst Portfolio as their Capstone Experience that could be used to secure positions in the local, state, and federal law enforcement as well as the private sector.

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Criminology programs combine principles of sociology, law and psychology to prepare students to deal with criminals, understand the justice system and work to prevent crime. These are the top graduate schools for criminology. Each school's score reflects its average rating on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding), based on a survey of academics at peer institutions. Read the methodology »

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Doctor of Philosophy in Criminology

The Ph.D. in criminology is designed to prepare students to produce theoretically informed empirical scholarship related to issues of crime and justice policy. After completing graduate courses in criminological theory, criminal justice policy, and empirical methods, Ph.D. students take advanced graduate coursework consistent with their research focus. The program trains students to produce scholarly research that is disseminated to researchers and policymakers through refereed publications.

Advanced coursework typically involves courses in data science, econometrics, law, and sociology. The dissertation is completed under the supervision of faculty in the Department of Criminology. Normally Ph.D. students complete the degree within four academic years. Details on individual faculty research interests can be found here . Details on recent Ph.D. graduates of the program can be found below.

PROGRAM FEATURES

• Students are admitted directly into the Ph.D. program.
• Each student is assigned two faculty mentors and works with the graduate chair to design a hand-tailored curriculum. Typically Ph.D. students take several “core” criminology courses in the first and second year. These include two courses in criminological theory, two courses in criminal justice policy, and two semesters of graduate level statistics or data science.
• The “comprehensive exam” for the program consists of a working paper that may be part of a future dissertation proposal.
• The Ph.D. dissertation typically includes three publishable papers.

DOCTORAL ADMISSIONS

Who is eligible to apply.

We expect a successful applicant to have earned a Bachelor’s degree by the time she/he begins the doctoral program. A strong background in research is highly recommended. Admission is very competitive.

Should I apply to the master’s program or doctoral program in criminology at Penn?

The master’s program is designed for individuals interested in furthering their knowledge of criminology and criminal justice policy in preparation for a range of professional opportunities in government, research, and academia. The doctoral program is designed for individuals with demonstrated excellence in academic research interested in generating scientific research on the causes of crime and the consequences of criminal justice policy.

How should I decide if the Penn doctoral program is a good fit for me?

Visit Penn criminology faculty member web pages to find out what projects faculty are currently working on. Read their published studies. If you are excited by the research questions and/or methods being used, then Penn could be a good choice for you. You should be able to identify one or more faculty research areas that align with your own interests. 

Who makes admissions decisions?

Doctoral admissions decisions are made by the graduate admissions committee, which is composed of criminology faculty members.

How does funding normally work?

Admitted students will be given four years of fellowship funding. This includes tuition and stipend support during term time. Summer stipend support for three years is also included in the fellowship. 

Recent Doctoral Program Alumni

Colleen Berryessa (Rutgers University)

David Mitre Becerril (University of Connecticut)

Mary Cavanaugh (Hunter College, CUNY)

Ruiyun (Frances) Chen (Georgia State University)

Olivia Choy (Nanyang Technological University)

Reagan Daly (CUNY, Institute for State and Local Governance)

Ellen Donnelly (Delaware University)

Charlotte Gill (George Mason University)

Ben Grunwald (Duke University)

Seunghoon Han (Chung-Ang University)

Jordan Hyatt (Drexel University)

Jacob Kaplan (Princeton University)

Alex Knorre (Boston College)

Carla Lewandowski (Rowan University)

Shichun (Asminet) Ling (CSU Los Angeles)

Wendy McClanahan (McClanahan Associates)

Caroline Meyer Angel (University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing)

Ruth Moyer (University of Pennsylvania)

Ben Nordstrom (Behavioral Health Group)

Viet Nguyen (Center for Justice Innovation))

Evelyn Patterson (Georgetown University)

Jill Portnoy Donaghy (RAND Corporation)

Meredith Rossner (Australia National University)

Jane A. Siegel (Rutgers University)

Rebecca Umbach (Google)

Daniel Woods (U.S. Department of Homeland Security)

Yuhao Wu (Peking University)

Master of Science in Criminal Justice

The Master of Science in Criminal Justice online program is designed to prepare professionals to advance their careers in the field of criminal justice. Our program emphasizes the skills and evidence-based principles that shape effective criminal justice leaders.

In addition to foundational theories of criminology and criminal justice, students explore policy design and implementation alongside emerging trends in the field. Students will learn to evaluate research and use statistical data to assess the efficacy of policies and practices in criminal justice.

Vulnerable populations, organizational leadership and change, and technological advances in the field of criminal justice are also covered.

The program will enable students to develop as ethical and skilled decision-makers in the various branches of criminal justice.

Earn your Master of Science in Criminal Justice online. Request information today.

Career Opportunities

This program is designed for working professionals who are looking to advance their careers in criminal justice or transition into the field.

Career outcomes can vary, depending on a student’s level of experience.

• Individuals currently working in criminal justice and looking to advance their careers
• Individuals currently working as staff or supervisors seeking to advance to mid- or senior-level management
• Current managers seeking to their hone skills and further advance their careers
• Job changers moving into criminal justice

Related Online Graduate Programs

PhD in Criminal Justice Pursue Excellence in Justice

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100% online, 8-week courses

Transfer in up to 50% of the degree total

Be a Leader in the Criminal Justice Field with Liberty University’s PhD in Criminal Justice

Are you an experienced law enforcement professional? If so, Liberty’s online PhD in Criminal Justice can help prepare you for senior leadership roles in criminal justice organizations at all levels of government.

Through advanced research and analysis of criminal justice practices, you can learn how to assess and improve government and law enforcement organizations. This doctorate can also help you master techniques in teaching and leadership. Liberty’s PhD in Criminal Justice provides you with training from experienced criminal justice scholars. Our curriculum is also centered on Christian principles so you can become an effective leader of integrity.

With our program, you can gain the right skills and expertise for your career goals. Liberty offers a general PhD in Criminal Justice as well as specialized areas of study in leadership and homeland security. With the Helms School of Government’s faculty of criminal justice professionals, you can learn from industry experts who are excited to share their experience with you.

What is a PhD in Criminal Justice ?

A PhD in Criminal Justice is a doctoral program that focuses on various high-level aspects of the field. Here are some of the topics that are included in Liberty University’s criminal justice doctorate:

• Corrections policy
• Juvenile justice policy
• Terrorism and intelligence
• Theories of crime
• Transnational organized crime

Additionally, you will focus on management and leadership skills specific to criminal justice, including stress management, organizational conflict, and program evaluation. Your coursework will also include a dissertation where you will write on a unique topic within criminal justice to help you hone your expertise.

What Will You Study in Our PhD in Criminal Justice Online Degree ?

Our PhD in Criminal Justice courses can offer you advanced knowledge in a wide range of critical issues. These topics include crime causation, comparative criminal justice systems, juvenile justice policies, and advanced corrections policies. You will also study international crime and terrorism to gain expertise in the global impact of organized crime.

Featured Courses

• CJUS 810 – Transnational Organized Crime
• CJUS 820 – Advanced Topics in Terrorism and Intelligence
• CJUS 830 – Criminal Justice Organizational Conflict
• CJUS 840 – Stress Management in Criminal Justice

Degree Information

• This program falls under the  Helms School of Government .
• View the  Graduate Government Course Guides   (login required) .

Why Choose Liberty’s Online Degree?

Liberty University provides training for leaders in the criminal justice field – all from a uniquely Christian perspective. Our criminal justice law instructors have real-world experience in the field and understand the critical issues found within it. You can excel in your field without compromising your principles with the advanced training you will gain in our online PhD in Criminal Justice degree program.

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• What Sets Us Apart?
• Private Nonprofit University
• 600+ Online Degrees
• No Standardized Testing for Admission
• Transfer in up to 75% of an Undergrad Degree
• Transfer in up to 50% of a Grad/Doctoral Degree

Potential Careers for PhD in Criminal Justice Graduates

• Crime scene investigation unit manager
• Criminal justice writer
• Detective/investigator
• Forensic investigator
• Lead detective/investigator
• Lead/senior researcher
• Manager (federal, state, or local government)
• Police chief or sheriff
• Polygraph examiner/operator
• Prison warden
• Professor/instructor
• Public policy advisor
• Security analyst
• Threat analyst
• University administrator (department chair, dean, chancellor)

Degree Options for the Online Criminal Justice PhD

There are several specializations to choose from in the PhD in Criminal Justice.

Generalized Track (No Specialization)

Liberty’s 100% online  PhD in Criminal Justice – generalized track*  is the most flexible of the 3 PhD in Criminal Justice specializations offered at Liberty University. With this program, you can choose specific courses and shape your criminal justice PhD to your specific needs.

View the  Degree Completion Plan .

*Please note that this is not a specialization. Any reference using the term “General” is the main degree and is only used to differentiate from other specializations.

Homeland Security

Liberty’s 100% online  PhD in Criminal Justice – Homeland Security  focuses on the threats our nation faces from terrorism, cybercrime, and weapons of mass destruction attacks. You can also learn how to lead risk assessment and response teams and strategize overcoming weaknesses in specific targets, cities, or regions.

Liberty’s 100% online  Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Criminal Justice – Leadership  degree focuses on the principles and practices of administrating large and diverse criminal justice organizations. You can also master critical skills in strategic planning and human resources development for the criminal justice field.

Not sure what to choose?

Speak to one of our admissions specialists to help you choose the program that best fits your needs.

Tuition & Aid

Your success is our success, which is why we are committed to providing quality academics at an affordable tuition rate. While other colleges are increasing their tuition, we have frozen tuition rates for the majority of our undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs for the past 9 years – and counting.

Eligible current and former military service members and their spouses may qualify for a special rate of $300/credit hour ( learn more ) .

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Admission Information for the PhD in Criminal Justice

Admission requirements.

• A non-refundable, non-transferable $50 application fee will be posted on the current application upon enrollment (waived for qualifying service members, veterans, and military spouses – documentation verifying military status is required) .
• Send official college transcripts (mailed as sealed, unopened copies or sent via a direct electronic transcript system). A regionally or nationally accredited master’s degree with at least a 3.0 GPA is required for admission in good standing.
• Applicants whose native language is other than English must submit official scores for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or an approved alternative assessment. For information on alternative assessments or TOEFL waivers, please call Admissions or view the official International Admissions policy .

Preliminary Acceptance

If you are sending in a preliminary transcript for acceptance, you must:

• Be in your final term and planning to start your doctoral degree after the last day of class for your master’s degree.
• Complete a Master’s Self-Certification Form confirming your completion date. You may download the form from the Forms and Downloads page or contact an admissions counselor to submit the form on your behalf.
• Submit an official transcript to confirm that you are in your final term. The preliminary transcript must show that you are within 6 credit hours of completion for a 30-48 credit hour master’s degree or within 9 credit hours of completion for a 49+ credit hour master’s degree.
• Send in an additional, final official transcript with a conferral date on it by the end of your first semester of enrollment in the new doctoral degree.

Transcript Policies

Official college transcript policy.

An acceptable official college transcript is one that has been issued directly from the institution and is in a sealed envelope. If you have one in your possession, it must meet the same requirements. If your previous institution offers electronic official transcript processing, they can send the document directly to [email protected] .

Admissions Office Contact Information

(800) 424-9596

(888) 301-3577

Email for Questions

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Email for Documents

[email protected]

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Liberty University is dedicated to providing world-class educational experiences to military students across the globe.

Who May Qualify?

• Active Duty
• Reserve/National Guard
• Veterans/Retirees
• Spouses of Service Members and Veterans/Retirees

Military Tuition Discount

We want to help you find the doctoral degree you want – at a price you’ve earned. As a thank-you for your military service, Liberty University offers eligible current and former service members like you or your spouse multiple pathways to earn a doctoral degree for only $300/credit hour . Find out how you can take advantage of this unique opportunity as you work toward your goal of reaching the pinnacle of your profession – for less.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can i get a phd in criminal justice.

While there may be other institutions that offer criminal justice PhD programs, we believe that Liberty University’s program can best fit your needs. You can earn your degree through Liberty while completing all of your coursework and dissertation online from the comfort of your home or office.

Are there resources available to online students?

By pursuing one of Liberty University’s online PhD programs in criminal justice, you will have access to a wide variety of online resources through the library portal.

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Criminal Justice, PhD

The UCF doctoral program in criminal justice is composed of a substantive core focused on criminal justice theory and institutions; a research methods core that prepares social scientists in the scientific method and social science statistics; and a selection of substantive criminal justice specializations, including policing, corrections and juvenile justice.

• 57 credit-hours
• Three areas of concentration
• The criminal justice doctoral program prepares students to examine criminal justice issues at multiple angles and levels.
• Students are prepared to pursue academic positions in universities, research positions in criminal justice agencies, and consultancies in program evaluation and needs assessment.
• Students are prepared to advance scholarship in criminal justice.
• Students become competent analysts to staff state and local criminal justice agencies.
• Students in this program are encouraged to improve safety and justice in communities through research and partnerships with neighborhood, city, county and state agencies and associations.

The criminal justice doctoral program puts substantive emphasis on core coursework in criminal justice theory and institutions as well as on in-depth concentrations in policing, corrections or juvenile justice. Students in the program complete 57 credit hours. The credit hour breakdown is as follows:

• 15 credit hours of substantive core
• 12 credit hours of methodological core
• Policing Theory and Research
• Correctional Theory and Research
• Juvenile Justice Theory and Research
• Six credit hours of elective courses
• 15 credit hours of dissertation

For additional information, including details about admission, visit the  UCF Graduate Catalog.

Admission Requirements

Applicants must submit:

• Official transcripts from each higher education institution attended.
• A master’s degree in criminal justice or related discipline from an accredited institution with at least a 3.5 GPA.
• Official, competitive GRE score taken within the last five years.
• Three letters of recommendation, with at least two being from faculty members who can assess the student’s ability to succeed in a doctoral program.
• A personal narrative of 500 to 1,000 words describing research interests, program expectations and career aspirations.
• An academic writing sample of at least 2,000 words (e.g., paper written for a master’s degree course) that demonstrates the applicant’s ability to complete graduate-level composition. This should not be published work, and the applicant must be the sole author.

Applicants may be requested to participate in a virtual interview with the department’s doctoral program committee. Students will simultaneously be considered for admission and funding. The doctoral program is a full-time, on-campus program.

Application Deadline:

Graduate Assistantships

The department offers several graduate assistantship opportunities for students to engage in teaching or research during their graduate studies. Assistantships include a tuition waiver, stipend, work experience, health insurance, and qualifies the student for in-state residency. For more information, contact us .

Student Association

The Criminal Justice Graduate Student Association (CJGSA) is a student-led organization committed to the professional development of UCF criminal justice graduate students. The association hosts workshops to help students develop in the areas of scholarship, teaching, research and service. We also facilitate communication between students, faculty, college and university partners to maintain a network of colleagues in the field. Members of the organization develop relationships with our community through volunteering and outreach opportunities.

For more information, please send us an email or visit us on Twitter.

Students and Alumni

Doctoral students.

Caitlin Brady ’20 PhD Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology Georgia Southern University

Sara Bryson ’20 PhD Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice East Carolina University

Lucas Alward ’22 PhD Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice Boise State University

Melanie Soderstrom ’22 PhD Assistant Professor in the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology Texas State University

Justin Smith ’22 PhD Research Scientist Loss Prevention Research Council

Nicholas Paul ’22 PhD Lecturer in the Department of Criminal Justice University of Central Florida

Devin Cowan ’23 PhD Data Analytics Specialist Charlotte-Meckenburg Police Department

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College of Behavioral and Social Sciences

Department of criminal justice.

We prepare criminal justice professionals who understand crime, criminals, victims, and the systems that create and define them—and use this understanding to inform change.

With some of the fastest growing programs at the University, the Department of Criminal Justice offers bachelor’s, master’s, and certificate programs. Our students learn foundational and advanced knowledge of criminal justice, criminology, and investigative sciences.

We have a long tradition of quality teaching, advocacy, and research and are proud of our faculty’s expertise in Criminal Justice research on terrorism, policing, law, corrections, juvenile delinquency, forensic investigation, social justice, and crime prevention. In addition to teaching a variety of undergraduate courses, faculty members continue to advise, research, and publish books and articles widely referenced by students, criminal justice professionals, and policymakers.

Our programs focus on the lifecycle of criminology. You’ll learn about the origins of criminal behavior, structure, function, and responsibilities of crime control agencies, as well as law enforcement, laws and regulations, prosecution, courts and corrections, juvenile justice, forensic investigation, as well as social justice issues.

Whether pursuing professional opportunities or an advanced degree, you’ll graduate with the skills needed to succeed at both.

Criminal Justice Honor Society

Are you an undergraduate or graduate student with a well-earned GPA? You may be eligible to join Alpha Phi Sigma, the National Criminal Justice Honor Society.

Our Undergraduate and Graduate Programs

We offer a variety of undergraduate and graduate applied social science programs that bridge theory to practice through social science perspectives and methodologies.

Undergraduate Programs

Criminal justice, forensic investigation, graduate programs, policing strategies, investigative sciences, see where a criminal justice career can take you.

We prepare Criminal Justice students for entry level, supervisory, investigative and research careers as well as promotion for persons currently working in the Criminal Justice field. Some students go on to pursue employment in fields such as parole and probation, adult and juvenile corrections, crime scene investigation, and police administration/strategies while others prepare for law school or pursue graduate and professional studies.

Internships and Cooperative Education

Students in our bachelor’s and minor programs benefit from hands-on learning experiences through the required internship. Working in a criminal justice-related organization, students work side-by-side with industry practitioners, while also learning through observation and exposure.

Student Advising

The Department matches all Criminal Justice students with an advisor according to the first initial of a student’s last name. Each student must meet with their assigned advisor at least once every semester. We also recommend students connect with their advisor before registering for any Criminal Justice classes. Your advising sessions are an opportunity to review your advisement form, a roadmap that guides you through program and course requirements.

For reference, the Department also posts a list of all advisors on the door to the department office. If your advisor is unavailable, we recommend students go to the department chair or other faculty member for help.

Interested in attending law school?

Coppin and University of Baltimore School of Law have partnered to offer a unique law school preparation program called the Fannie Angelos Program for Academic Excellence . The Angelos Scholars Program and LSAT Award Program both include an LSAT prep course taught on Coppin’s campus each spring semester. Program application deadlines are in the fall.

University Non-Discrimination Statement

Coppin State University is committed to equality of educational opportunity and does not discriminate against applicants, students, or employees based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, or handicap. Moreover, Coppin State University is open to people of all races and actively seeks to promote racial integration by recruiting and enrolling all races.

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Faculty and staff.

Our department boasts highly qualified and student-focused faculty and staff. Faculty members hold advanced degrees from leading U.S. universities and have considerable practical, teaching, research, and service expertise. Our students’ interests and needs are the faculty’s most important concerns. Faculty are actively involved with students through collegiate and community activities.

Johnny Rice II DrPH, MSCJ

Jacqueline rhoden-trader phd, michael berlin jd, phd.

Darlene Brothers-Gray PhD

Dilip k. das phd, carrolyn robertson.

Min Zhang PhD

The Department of Criminal Justice is within the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences. 

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California’s Looming Crime Catastrophe

Recent legislation makes it easier for felons to claim racial bias—potentially putting them back on the streets in large numbers.

On July 13, 2020, gunfire broke out between two cars in the Bay Area town of Antioch, California. One of the cars’ occupants, Daunzhay Young, was hit during the fusillade and was rushed to the hospital. Young survived—this time.

Oakland’s gang wars were radiating outward, including to this once-bucolic city northeast of Oakland. Young was a member of Oakland’s Case gang. A month later, another Case gangbanger was shot while sitting in a car in Oakland. He died the next day. On August 27, 2020, a third Case member was shot in Oakland; three guns were collected at the scene. Case’s archenemy, the ENT gang—named for three dead homies—was on a roll.

On August 29, 2020, Daunzhay Young’s luck ran out. A male chased him down a quiet residential street in Antioch in the middle of the day, gun blazing. After Young collapsed, the gunman stood over him and pumped him with additional shots from a semiautomatic pistol. The execution was successful.

Antioch’s next known entry in the Case–ENT feud occurred on February 27, 2021. A 21-year-old male was ambushed in his car at an Antioch gas station in the middle of the day; when the ambushee tried to escape on foot, he was shot ten more times. After he fell, his assailant, later identified as Terryonn Pugh, pistol-whipped him. The victim’s Case confederates returned fire from their car. Later that evening, Case members sprayed bullets around an Oakland intersection to show ENT who was boss.

On March 9, 2021, a mystery car was parked for hours on Aspen Way, a residential street in Antioch. Two young males emerged from a nearby house and entered a vehicle on the same street. The mystery car accelerated toward them, its occupants unleashing a salvo of bullets. The driver was critically injured and the passenger wounded. The shooters, who included Terryonn Pugh from the February 27 gas-station attack, fled the scene. A helicopter transported the injured driver to a hospital, courtesy of Antioch taxpayers; the wounded passenger was taken by ambulance. The injured driver died.

By then, 27 law-enforcement agencies in California and Nevada were engaged in a massive effort to shut down the Case–ENT bloodbath. On March 31, 2021, SWAT, warrant, and gang teams from Antioch, Merced, Los Angeles, and the town of Brentwood tried to serve warrants on the suspects in the March 9 Aspen Way shooting. The suspects fled but were chased down and caught. By the time the multiagency law-enforcement action, known as Operation Windstar, wrapped up, dozens of adult and juvenile members of Case and ENT had been arrested for shootings, robberies, and burglaries; 40 firearms and large amounts of cash had been seized. The Antioch police department had devoted nearly 7,000 hours of undercover surveillance, crime-scene reconstruction, interviews, and gang research to the enterprise.

The mood was celebratory at the April 13, 2021, news conference announcing the conclusion of Operation Windstar. Contra Costa County District Attorney Diane Becton congratulated her prosecutors and inspectors “for their important work in filing this case.” (Antioch is in Contra Costa County.) Becton’s office and the federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies involved in the effort “did a tremendous job in bringing some closure to the victims’ families surrounding these heinous acts of violence,” Becton said.

That closure proved short-lived. In April 2023, a superior court judge in Contra Costa County threw out the life-without-parole sentences previously imposed on the Aspen Way murder defendants, on the ground that the sentencing of black gang members for gang murder in Contra Costa County had historically been “systemically biased.” The defendants did not claim that the legal process against them was unfair. Nevertheless, because allegedly race-based sentencing disparities had occurred in the past in Contra Costa County, the life-without-parole sentences of the Aspen Way killers Eric Windom, Terryonn Pugh, Keyshawn McGee, and Allen Trent were now invalid.

California is about to demonstrate what a world constructed from the tenets of critical race studies looks like. The sentencing reversal in California v. Windom is the result of a recent law that will likely bring the state’s criminal-justice system to its knees. The Racial Justice Act, passed in 2020 without meaningful public review, turns long-standing academic tropes about implicit bias and white privilege into potent legal tools. And the floodgates are about to open. Starting this year, the RJA allows anyone serving time in a California prison or jail for a felony to challenge his conviction and sentencing retroactively on the ground of systemic racial bias.

The Racial Justice Act operationalizes the proposition that every aspect of the criminal-justice system is biased against blacks. But according to the act’s legislative authors, it’s too hard to prove such bias in the case of individual arrests and prosecutions. Therefore, the act does away with the concept of individual fault and individual proof. From now on, statistics about past convictions are sufficient to invalidate a present trial or sentence.

The RJA explicitly repudiates a key Supreme Court precedent that had governed bias challenges in criminal trials. The plaintiff in McCleskey v. Kemp (1987), Warren McCleskey, a black man, was facing the death penalty for murdering a white police officer in Fulton County, Georgia. McCleskey presented a study purportedly showing that killers of all races in Georgia were more likely to be sentenced to death if their victim was white. Blacks who killed whites were at greatest risk of capital punishment. That alleged historical disparity in sentencing invalidated his own death sentence, argued McCleskey. The Court, in a 5–4 decision, disagreed.

Defendants must show that criminal-justice decision-makers were purposefully biased against them , in order to throw out a conviction or a sentence under the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court ruled. Statistics purporting to show a historical pattern of bias are not enough to support the requisite showing of individual discriminatory purpose against a particular defendant.

Thanks to the RJA, McCleskey no longer governs bias challenges in California. From now on in California, statistics purporting to show a pattern of bias in the past are enough to invalidate a current arrest, criminal charge, or judicial sentence.

And what statistics they are! The Antioch Racial Justice Act case, California v. Windom , exemplifies the analyses that pass muster under the act. Through discovery requests to the district attorney’s office, defense counsel assembled a database of 89 defendants who had been charged with gang murder in Contra Costa County from 2015 to 2022. Forty-eight of those defendants were black. There were 41 defendants in the comparison pool, made up of any nonblack race the defendants could get their hands on, since white gang-murder defendants in Contra Costa County were virtually nonexistent. Sixty-two percent of the black gang murderers (30) got a sentence of life without parole because of the egregiousness of their killings. It was that so-called LWOP sentence that the four defendants in Windom were challenging. A little over 53 percent of the nonblack gang murderers (24) got a sentence of life without parole. The defense expert, University of California–Irvine criminologist Richard McCleary, used fancy statistical footwork to massage those small differences in an already-small sample size into larger significance. That was the least of the analysis’s problems, however. The real deficiency was that McCleary discarded the rule of comparing like with like. He made no effort to determine the criminal histories of the defendants in the various comparison pools to see if those defendants really were similarly situated. He made no effort to determine how heinous were the murders committed by members of the various comparison pools.

But charging and sentencing always take a defendant’s particular history and the details of his crime into account. Two defendants can both be charged under an aggravated assault statute, but if one defendant has 11 prior convictions for attempted murder, robbery, and carjacking, say, while the second defendant has never been arrested before, a prosecutor will seek different sentences in their two cases. Likewise, two defendants can both be charged with murder, but if one killing involves a higher number of what are known as special circumstances, their sentences will reflect those differences. (Special circumstances include killing a witness, ambush, or torture; they go into the determination of life-without-parole sentences.)

McCleary needed to show that the 17 nonblack defendants in the comparison pool who did not receive a life-without-parole sentence had similar criminal histories or had committed murders of equal egregiousness to the 30 black defendants who did receive life-without-parole sentences. Had he shown such similarities, the argument that race explained their different sentences would be plausible. But McCleary did not even try to look at criminal records or the severity of the murders. The judge, however, was willing to accept the unproved assumption that all the gang-murder defendants in the comparison pools engaged in similar conduct and had similar histories. He would not accept the proposition, he wrote, that “Black defendants charged with gang murder [have], on average, worse criminal records than non-Black defendants, committed the crimes in crueler fashion, or committed more provable crimes,” absent evidence to the contrary. The Contra Costa County district attorney did not provide such evidence, having not even attempted the labor-intensive analysis of the data that would have been necessary.

After the judge had ruled in California v. Windom , a Contra Costa prosecutor commissioned his own study of the data. It turned out that the black gang members in the life-without-parole pool had committed more heinous murders than the nonblack gang members, as measured by the special circumstances in their cases. Once that difference was considered, there was no racial difference in the likelihood that a defendant would get life without parole. The district attorney’s office chose not to publicize the study and has not made it publicly available.

And now, based on a statistically inadequate analysis, not only are the four defendants in Windom entitled to resentencing, but all 30 black gang convicts in the historical pool who had received life without parole can now sue to reopen their sentences, thanks to the RJA’s retroactivity provision. How could criminal history, so central to the practice of criminal law, be deemed irrelevant to Racial Justice Act comparisons? Because the RJA is based not on real-world facts but on academic conceits about a totalizing system of white supremacy. The act establishes an infinite regress of bias from which no escape is possible. If a prosecutor tries to offer what the act calls “race-neutral reasons” (such as criminal history) for either past prosecutions or the current one, those reasons can be challenged, in the words of the statute, as the product of “systemic and institutional racial bias, racial profiling, and historical patterns of racially biased policing and prosecution.”

Academic ideas about what counts as bias are also now part of the criminal-justice ecosystem, and their academic peddlers are in demand as expert witnesses. A police officer stopped a felon on federal probation in a high-crime area of San Francisco. The felon, Demond Finley, had an illegal, loaded handgun in his car. At trial, defense counsel tried to suppress Finley’s gun under the Fourth Amendment’s search-and-seizure clause, but the judge ruled the search legal. Time to cue up an RJA motion! “Race expert” Dante King testified that the officer’s use of the phrase “high-crime area” in explaining his stop demonstrated “bias against people of color.” (That same Dante King would assert in February 2024 that “whites are psychopaths [whose] behavior represents an underlying, biologically transmitted proclivity.” Labeling whites “psychopaths” does not demonstrate bias against people of whiteness, apparently.) An appellate court upheld Finley’s RJA claim. Never mind that the neighborhood where the stop took place was, in fact, crime-ridden or that a neighborhood’s level of crime can help determine the legality of a stop. After the ruling in Finley v. San Francisco , stopping suspicious cars in high-crime areas in California will henceforth be even more legally risky than before, and carrying illegal guns even less so.

The RJA has helped revive the academic concept of implicit bias (defined as “unconscious, unintentional bias against disfavored groups”). Proof of the existence of implicit bias has rested on a computer-generated exercise called the implicit association test. But the test has been shown to be variable in its results and incapable of predicting actual biased behavior. Even some of the test’s developers now acknowledge its weaknesses. But while the concept of implicit bias may now be contested even in academia, the Racial Justice Act guarantees that it will determine the outcomes of criminal cases.

In January 2022, for example, a member of San Diego’s gang-suppression team stopped a driver who turned out to have a concealed firearm in his car—a misdemeanor in California. The driver, Tommy Bonds, claimed that he was stopped only because he was black, in violation of the RJA. The police officer testified that he did not know Bonds’s race when he stopped him. The trial court held that the stop could not have been the product of racial bias if the officer did not know Bonds’s race. The appellate court reversed—not on the ground that the officer did, in fact, know Bonds’s race but on the ground that implicit bias could have affected the officer’s actions, even if he did not know Bonds’s race. Bonds had called a sociologist from California State University–San Marcos who specializes in race studies as an expert witness. She emphasized that implicit bias was, by definition, “ un intentional and un conscious” (italicization in the original), as the appellate judge wrote in his opinion. Here, such factors as the location of the stop could have triggered the officer’s unconscious biases toward black drivers, without the officer knowing that this particular driver was black.

The Racial Justice Act is a full-employment measure for such academic “race experts.” A parade of them testified in another gang-murder case from Antioch. In 2017, Gary Bryant, Jr. and Diallo Jackson were convicted of having killed a gang rival in an Antioch apartment complex in 2014. During the initial trial, the prosecutor had played the defendants’ rap videos and quoted their rap lyrics to establish the defendants’ gang affiliations. The RJA now made such a trial strategy actionable. In the convicts’ subsequent 2021 RJA suit, three “experts” in implicit bias and rap music claimed that the prosecutor had triggered the jury’s biased associations of black men with rap music and violence. It mattered not that the prosecutor did not intend such alleged triggering and that he was not himself biased, as the defense counsel acknowledged. Bryant and Jackson’s 2017 convictions for first-degree gang murder were reversed in 2022 and a new trial ordered. The chance that witnesses to the 2014 murder will still be available and that evidence will still be fresh is negligible.

The greatest impact of the RJA on California’s criminal-justice system, at least in the short run, may come not from its activation of left-wing race concepts, however, but from its capacity to bury district attorneys’ offices under an avalanche of discovery requests. Courts have been grappling with what a defendant needs to show as a preliminary matter under the RJA to gain access to vast amounts of prosecutorial records. The answer is: very little. A defendant in Solano County challenged his prosecution for felony possession of Ecstasy for sale on the ground that blacks in Solano County were historically more frequently charged with that crime than were dealers of other races. He sought the names and case numbers of everyone charged, or who could have been charged, with felony possession of Ecstasy for sale in Solano County from January 1, 2016, to March 17, 2021; the names and case numbers of everyone charged, or who could have been charged, for other drug offenses over that time period; the names and case numbers of everyone whom the DA declined to charge for those offenses; and the disposition of all those cases. To justify his request, Clemon Young, Jr. invoked a study allegedly showing that black drivers in California were stopped at higher rates than nonblack drivers. Young claimed that his own stop resulted from racial profiling. Ergo, he had a right to prosecutorial materials on charging drug crimes.

This was a non sequitur—evidence about police stops is irrelevant to how prosecutors charge drug crimes—and the trial court denied Young’s discovery request. The appellate court reversed. Pending a rehearing, the appellate court allowed Young, in theory, to acquisition reams of prosecutorial materials about charging by claiming that police-car stops in California were biased.

The defense bar and its media supporters were ecstatic. The Los Angeles/San Francisco Daily Journal exulted that the “Young Court’s broad interpretation of [the RJA’s] discovery provisions open[s] the door for defense counsel to leverage the Act to negotiate reduced or dismissed charges or sentences, request a mistrial, discharge a jury panel, dismiss enhancements or special circumstances or reduce one or more charges, vacate convictions and sentences, and order new proceedings.” No wonder that the mere threat of invoking the RJA is leading prosecutors to alter their litigation and sentencing strategies.

The act places no time limits on how far back a defendant can request records or, as we have seen, on what the relevant comparison groups are. Prosecutors’ offices will have to extract, review, and redact records potentially dating back decades. The California legislature gave the Office of the State Public Defender over $5 million in 2023 to litigate RJA claims. No money was allocated to district attorneys’ offices to defend against those claims.

A network of academics and computer scientists is collaborating to create databases that the defense bar can draw on to bring systemic bias claims. The ACLU of Northern California has asked ten county jurisdictions to hand over all their criminal records since 2005. These data repositories are not intended to be neutral. At a groundbreaking conference on the RJA at UC Berkeley School of Law in February 2024, a law student involved in one such project asked the audience: “If you are afraid [that the database] might be useful to DAs, let us know.”

The defense bar and activist groups know how powerful a tool the California legislature has handed them. An ACLU attorney told the Berkeley conference: “We have the potential for something grand: to unravel an unjust system. We are celebrating the dawn of a new era.”

How did something so transformative pass with so little attention? Indeed, most of the legal profession in California remains unaware of the RJA. Its drafters and supporters pushed it through at the very end of the 2020 legislative session, using questionable parliamentary techniques. The most notorious was a practice known as gut-and-amend, whereby a bill that has gone through normal legislative channels before losing momentum is reamed out and its language replaced with unrelated legislative content at the last minute. After the RJA had stalled in the assembly, its author, San Jose assemblyman Ash Kalra, found a moribund bill in the California Senate, removed its language, and inserted the RJA text. With minutes ticking down on the 2020 session, the newly repurposed bill was sent back to the floor of the assembly without the traditional committee oversight. Police and district attorneys’ associations were distracted by legislation on police violence and other criminal-justice reform matters and paid little attention.

What scant opposition emerged concerned the bill’s retroactivity provisions. Kalra removed the retroactivity clause to carry the RJA over the finish line. Ordinarily, protocol would require that RJA sponsors wait a few years before trying again on retroactivity, Kalra told the Berkeley conference. In this case, the year after initial passage, Kalra pushed through amendments containing the previously deleted retroactivity provisions. Those provisions will unleash a cascading series of lawsuits—in 2024, enabling prisoners still behind bars to challenge their convictions; in 2025, enabling felons convicted in 2015 or later to challenge their convictions, even if those felons have since been released; and in 2026, allowing any felon who has ever been convicted to challenge his conviction, even if he is no longer in prison.

In other words, the bill is a ticking time bomb. Kalra’s colleagues “did not understand how significant the RJA was,” he told the Berkeley RJA conference. “Maybe now they do.” Racial justice advocates are distributing material in prisons to tutor convicts on bringing RJA actions. Kalra is a celebrity among the incarcerated. He has been accosted by his fans at least eight times while visiting prisons.

But however justified the activists’ triumphalism, they sense a cloud on the horizon: the reality of racial crime disparities. Much effort was expended at the Berkeley conference brainstorming about how to address claims that different rates of crime, not law-enforcement bias, cause disparities in police activity and incarceration rates. If district attorneys or judges assert that different groups commit crime at different rates, advised one conferee: “Say: prove it!” Anyone making such a claim, moreover, is allegedly obligated to offer a theory for why such different rates exist. David Ball, a law professor at Santa Clara University, asked facetiously: “If I tan, do I become more violent?” Ball reminded his audience that American eugenicists had claimed a correlation between race and crime. Ergo, anyone using empirical data about crime rates today is flirting with, if not actively promoting, eugenics.

“The bill is a ticking time bomb. Kalra’s colleagues ‘did not understand how significant the RJA was,’ he said. ‘Maybe now they do.’ ”

But someone asserting that crime drives the criminal-justice system is not obligated to explain why different groups have different rates of crime. The question of whether actual crime commission or racism on the part of law-enforcement personnel is responsible for black overrepresentation in prison is distinct from the question of why black crime rates are so high. For purposes of evaluating the truth claims of the Racial Justice Act, only the first question is germane. The advocates want to change the subject, however, and put those claiming the existence of crime disparities on the defensive, lest others also break the taboos around black crime.

Color-blind technology is now suspect, in a shoot-the-messenger reflex. The ShotSpotter system uses aural sensors to alert police to drive-by shootings, providing the exact location of gunfire, the likely number of shooters, and whether automatic weapons were involved. It overcomes the apathy barrier to solving inner-city shootings, most of which are not called in to the police. Racial justice advocates hate ShotSpotter, however. They allege that it merely reinforces biased beliefs about violent-crime commission.

And now the RJA has given them a new tool to discredit ShotSpotter and any jurisdiction that uses it. A Los Angeles public defender at the Berkeley conference called the technology “bogus.” When she was defending a shooting case in Pasadena, she asked the district attorney to turn over every case ever filed because of a ShotSpotter alert. The DA’s office responded that it did not keep such data. The public defender then produced a map of ShotSpotter sensors in Pasadena. The sites overlapped with minority neighborhoods. Conclusion: bias. The Pasadena police department, on this view, had placed the sensors not based on incidence of gunfire but on the incidence of minority residents, simply out of prejudicial whim. The district attorney dropped the shooting case, facing the threat of a massive RJA request for data that it did not possess and of a totalizing narrative, impervious to facts on the ground.

(Cameras are also biased. At the Berkeley conference, Kalra complained about videos “showing black faces running into stores and breaking car windows.” But the videos document actual events. If there were comparable footage showing white looting, the clips would be all over the news.)

The ShotSpotter critique is emblematic of the RJA mentality. We are to believe that white neighborhoods are experiencing an epidemic of drive-by shootings and other crimes that the residents and the police ignore. If only ShotSpotter sensors were placed in white neighborhoods, they would pick up a proportional number of white shooters and white victims to match what is recorded in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. The belief that violent-crime rates are highest in minority communities is, according to RJA supporters, a function of over-policing, not of over-offending. But the bodies don’t lie. In 2021, blacks between the ages of 10 and 24 nationally died of gun homicide at nearly 25 times the rate of whites in that age cohort, according to the CDC . No one is hiding from the authorities the white corpses that would level that disparity. Black juveniles in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia were shot at 100 times the rate of white juveniles from March 2020 to December 2021. No one prevents white shooting victims from going to a hospital emergency room and getting counted in a city’s gun-violence data. If white children were slaughtered at the black rate, a revolution would break out.

In Los Angeles, blacks are 17 times as likely to be a homicide victim as whites, and 13 times as likely statewide. Who is killing these black victims? Not the police and not white supremacists, but other blacks. In Los Angeles, blacks are 57 times as likely to be a homicide suspect as whites. Blacks are 21 times as likely to commit a violent crime as whites in Los Angeles, and 36 times as likely to commit a robbery. These data come from witnesses to, and victims of, these crimes, mostly minority themselves, in their reports to the Los Angeles Police Department. In California as a whole, blacks are 11 times as likely to get arrested for homicide as whites, even though a greater proportion of white homicides are domestic, and thus more easily solved than gang shootings.

The media, academics, and race advocates bury these disparities, preferring to rail about phantom white racism rather than confront the reality of black crime commission and victimization. The Prosecutors Alliance of California, a progressive group, declares in its pro-RJA materials that “Blacks and Latinx” constitute “more than 90 percent of adults with gang enhancements in state prison,” as if that fact self-evidently proves bias. But those groups commit the grisliest gang crimes—white gangs don’t come close. A former homicide detective in Oakland says that any comparison between white and black drive-bys is “ridiculous.” “White gang violence in the Bay Area barely registers,” he says. If the RJA advocates want to insist that white biker gangs engage in the same tit-for-tat lethal feuds that led to Operation Windstar in Antioch, they should locate the bodies. They cannot.

So desperate are the RJA forces to maintain the fiction of race-based, rather than crime-based, disparities in California’s criminal-justice system that they manufacture racial disparities where none exist. “Did you know,” asks the Prosecutors Alliance, that “more than 50 percent of people on death row are Black, Latinx, Asian, or Native American?” But those groups make up at least 61 percent of the state population, so Californians “of color” are actually underrepresented on death row.

A court ruling in April 2024, however, should alleviate left-wing worries that the reality of black crime will undermine the reach of the Racial Justice Act. Now, any judge who even hypothesizes about those crime realities can be disqualified from adjudicating Racial Justice Act motions. The San Diego Public Defenders Office had sought to prevent a San Diego Superior Court judge from hearing an RJA motion in a homicide case. The judge’s sin? In a previous prosecution, he had questioned the defense claim that blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately incarcerated—a claim based on population ratios, rather than crime commission. “There is absolutely no evidence that . . . the proportion of persons in an ethnicity committing a crime must be the same as the proportion of the population,” Judge Howard Shore had said in court. In another case, Shore had questioned whether the criminal-justice system is infected by racism.

The second-highest judge of the Superior Court of Orange County granted the Public Defenders Office’s disqualification motion. Based on Shore’s heresies, Judge Cheri Pham wrote, a person could reasonably conclude that Shore “believes certain racial or ethnic groups commit more crimes than others.” (They do.) Just as bad, Shore may not “give weight to statistical evidence that indicates there is an implicit bias against certain racial or ethnic groups.” (Fittingly, Pham earned her J.D. from the Berkeley law school.)

Knowing the truth—or at least challenging a lie—is now judicial malpractice. Any judge who is not already committed to the ideology of systemic racism is unfit to hear cases under the Racial Justice Act. Such a standard for judicial impropriety is a violation of due process and will move the legal system further into the realm of totalitarian fiction. 

Not surprisingly, the anti-law-enforcement Left is anticipating a successful run on the remaining vestiges of law and order in California. Evan Kuluk, the public defender who won the Windom suit in Contra Costa County, told the Berkeley conferees that the entire gang penal code in California was “racist”—another target for elimination on the grounds of disparate impact. Those RJA challenges will likely receive a sympathetic hearing from the California bench, which keeps churning out pro-RJA rulings. On May 2, 2024, a justice on California’s Supreme Court listed 35 black victims of alleged police racism, including Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, and George Floyd, as reason why generations of black parents have given their children “the talk” and why “attempting to avoid police officers reflects, for many [black] people, simply a desire to avoid risking injury or death.”

The one group with the most potential clout to fight the RJA is compromised. While the California District Attorneys Association singlehandedly fought RJA passage, the state’s progressive prosecutors share the RJA worldview that, in Ash Kalra’s words, “in every aspect of the justice system, there is bias.” Several such progressive prosecutors started dismantling the sentencing practices targeted by the RJA even before getting sued. Pamela Price in Alameda County (whose county seat is Oakland) has already banned almost all sentencing enhancements. Price and others are setting up Racial Justice Act units; it is not clear which side those units are on.

When such progressive district attorneys face the inevitable RJA actions, will they put up a vigorous defense, or will the lawsuits resemble the classic sweetheart suit between only nominal courtroom adversaries?

Contra Costa District Attorney Diane Becton may have celebrated Operation Windstar immediately after its conclusion, but after losing California v. Windom , she sounded almost giddy. “It really is a landmark ruling,” she said in a television interview. “The district attorney’s office recognizes that today’s ruling is one of significance for offsetting systemic racial disparities within the criminal-justice system. The court’s ruling provides direction, and my office will review similarly charged cases to promote fair and equitable prosecution.” Becton made no effort in her post– California v. Windom remarks to defend her attorneys or her office against the charge of systemic bias.      

The statistical thinking behind the Racial Justice Act will expand to other policy areas such as health care and family court. “The possibilities are endless because racism is pervasive,” Kalra told the Berkeley audience. He expects to consult with legislators in other states about passing their own Racial Justice Acts.

The fiction that all racial disparities are the result of racial bias has already compromised meritocratic standards in STEM, the legal profession, and other high-stakes endeavors. Now that that fiction has become part of California’s criminal-justice system, the determined law-enforcement work that shut down the East Bay’s Case–ENT feud will become rarer. Why should police and prosecutors try aggressively to incapacitate murderous black gangs when their efforts can be undone on the basis of tendentious statistical analyses? Unless California voters reverse the Racial Justice Act, the state is about to become more violent and the promise of equal justice under the law less credible.

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Top Photo: A study by a California prosecutor found that black gang members received stiffer penalties than nonblacks—not because of racial discrimination but because they committed more heinous crimes. (Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529).

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Criminal justice backlash heads to the California ballot

T his fall, California voters will have multiple chances to decide whether their state has gone too far in reining in law enforcement and reducing criminal penalties.

A statewide initiative that’s likely to qualify for the ballot would unwind parts of Proposition 47 , a collection of sentencing reductions passed by voters years before the George Floyd killing sparked a national movement to rethink criminal justice policy. At the same time, two of the country’s most prominent district attorneys committed to police accountability and slimmer sentences are fighting to keep their jobs.

The alignment of those questions on the November ballot will force the collection of activists, funders and politicians who led the historic turn away from aggressive policing and incarceration to decide which parts of that legacy to prioritize defending.

For some of the politicians, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, it means considering whether to cut a deal to crack down on property crime as a means of forestalling an anti-Prop 47 initiative already dividing Democratic officials and candidates. For donors, it means determining if they are ready to spend as robustly to protect Prop 47 and progressive district attorneys in Los Angeles and Oakland as they did to put them in place.

“California had led the nation in mass incarceration, so going from that to being a leader in a movement that makes us safer was very exciting,” said Daniel Zingale, a former Newsom adviser who previously helped organize the donor community that coalesced behind Prop 47 in 2014. “There’s a risk of fatigue coming out of a moment like that.”

A decade later, California’s ballot will again test the criminal justice reformers, this time against their most formidable challenge yet: a coalition that brings together rural sheriffs and big-city mayors with funding from big-box retailers amid a nationwide resurgence of voter concern about street crime.

The road to reform, and back

For a quarter-century, California politicians of both parties responded to voter concerns about crime by defaulting to policies of ever-tougher penalties and new prison construction. In 2011, those facilities were so full that the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state to remedy what it called unconstitutional overcrowding.

Voters responded by reducing drug and property crime penalties with Proposition 47 in 2014, loosened parole rules with Proposition 57 two years later, and defended both by rejecting an effort to overturn them with Proposition 20 in 2020. Democratic governors and legislators cheered those changes while enacting laws that scaled back punishment . A new generation of prosecutors, like Alameda County’s Pamela Price and Los Angeles’s George Gascón, repudiated sentence-lengthening tools like extra time for gang membership or adult trials for juveniles.

Prison and jail populations shrank. With reported crime rates dipping to historic lows, public sentiment was firmly on reformers’ side for much of the past decade — a sea change validated through a series of statewide votes and fortified by a national movement toward racial justice.

But some types of violent crime are again on the rise. Car break-ins and shoplifting have increased in large cities. Californians have become accustomed to the sights of fentanyl smoked on sidewalks and toiletries locked behind glass cases at pharmacies. Participation in court-ordered drug treatment plunged, as have arrests for misdemeanor property crimes.

A political backlash has followed. Price faces a recall election in November and the prospect of being ousted before she gets halfway through her first term — a repeat of the way Chesa Boudin was abruptly yanked from the San Francisco District Attorney’s office in 2022. Gascón barely mustered a quarter of the vote in his March primary after he drew numerous challengers and faced a constant drumbeat of conservative media criticism. All three rode promises of change into office and then faced voter reprisals stoked by restive deputy prosecutors and funded by deep-pocketed foes.

Democratic politicians sense the changing winds. Newsom and lawmakers from his party are pushing bills to bolster property crime prosecutions, and the governor worked with Attorney General Rob Bonta — a potential governor candidate himself — to dispatch law enforcement assistance to Oakland this year.

It may not be enough to avert a ballot fight. Big-box and grocery store chains like Walmart, Home Depot, and Target, which claim they face a shoplifting epidemic, have poured millions of dollars into a prosecutor-backed ballot initiative that would unravel voter-enacted changes by allowing repeat drug and theft offenders to be charged with felonies. The initiative would also make it easier to charge fentanyl dealers with homicide. Last month they submitted enough petition signatures to qualify for the November ballot.

Some repeal proponents insist they don’t want to return to a failed era of mass incarceration, arguing the initiative would target serial offenders. They portray the reimposition of drug felonies as a tool to compel people into treatment. But they also believe there has been a decisive shift among voters who just four years ago overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure reupping penalties.

“We’ve seen more overdose deaths and a growing homelessness crisis,” said San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a Democrat who has endorsed the measure. He cited “the number of small business owners who have expressed deep dismay because they’ve been victims of crime and have felt powerless to address it.”

The only game in town

The shifting political landscape has put reformers on the defensive after years of consistent victories. They note that crime remains historically low and warn that opponents — both law enforcement groups and retailers and developers who have funded campaigns — are cynically exploiting public anxiety and conflating crime with homelessness.

“I think what voters are looking for is solutions, and I think right now there’s a lot of gaslighting about what those solutions could be,” said Tinisch Hollins, who leads Californians for Safety and Justice, a nonprofit that has pushed for more lenient laws. “A lot of the folks opposed to Proposition 47 and reform overall are counting on the fatigue of folks wanting immediate relief and rethinking their choices.”

Those dynamics have opened up fault lines among Democrats over how to respond. While two of the state’s most prominent big-city mayors have endorsed the initiative to walk back aspects of Prop 47, state lawmakers in Sacramento have resisted the rush back to the ballot. Broadly, they are wary of returning to the discredited policies that produced California’s prison overcrowding crisis in the first place. Personally, many of them supported Prop 47 or Gascón and are loath to walk those positions back.

Newsom, whose chief of staff Dana Williamson ran the 2020 campaign that defeated a previous toughen-up initiative from retailers and prosecutors, has been steadfast in resisting wholesale changes to Prop 47. His office regularly touts fentanyl seizures and organized theft arrests to argue laws on the books work.

Some Democrats are wary of a ballot measure that could divide their coalition while motivating Republicans to vote, especially as control of the US House could turn on a handful of California races . Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig said he has spoken to Democratic state lawmakers fixated on “the impact this might have on other races than on some fundamental difference with the idea embodied by this initiative.”

Newsom and legislative leaders have responded to the ballot measure threat by working on a bill package that would make it easier to crack down on repeat property crime offenders and target resellers of stolen goods.

“For the past few years when we tried to do things (in Sacramento), I hit a brick wall. The dialogue is completely different,” said California Retailers President President Rachel Michelin. “We went from no one wanting to do a retail theft bill — now it’s like everything’s a retail theft bill.”

Many Democrats see such a package as their best path to deter an initiative, which can be pulled before the ballot is finalized in late June. Michelin and prosecutors have been firm that they will go to voters unless Sacramento enacts substantial changes — and some prosecutors believe any real change would entail a vote. California's constitution requires voters to approve any changes to laws originally enacted via citizen initiative.

“The public is not unclear on the current situation. They're not happy. And I think that's why you saw so many signatures submitted,” Democratic San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said in an interview. If lawmakers don’t pass sufficiently strong legislation, Gloria went on, “that DA measure is going to be the only game in town, and I think it will be very successful at the ballot box because I think people want to see change.”

Splitting heirs

If the initiative does end up before voters, it will put pressure on the coterie of wealthy individuals and philanthropies that funded a decade of work to move California criminal justice policy leftward. They may be forced to triage resources between the progressive prosecutors and measures sharing a ballot in November.

The committee to fight the Prop 47 rollback has raised just $70,000 so far, with only token amounts or nothing yet from major criminal justice reform donors who have spent some $50 million on California politics in the last decade. Oakland philanthropist Quinn Delaney, who has poured $14 million into California politics since 2014, has given just $25,000. Oil heiress Stacy Schusterman, who has spent roughly $2.5 million in state politics during that time, has given the same amount.

“In progressive philanthropy,” acknowledges Zingale, “there’s always a risk of funding fatigue.”

Defenders of Prop 47 see their best hope in rallying California’s overwhelmingly Democratic electorate to view the conflict in partisan terms. Opponents of the ballot initiative have put out digital ads decrying the measure as a project of “extremist Republican politicians” like Rep. Kevin Kiley, a longtime Newsom antagonist who now represents a district sprawling down the state’s rural eastern and northern reaches.

That has been Gascón’s strategy, too. His reelection effort has emphasized that his opponent, onetime prosecutor Nathan Hochman, is a former Republican whose campaign is heavily funded by prominent southern California GOP donor Gerald Marcil.

As the Republican nominee for attorney general in 2022, Hochman was blown out in Los Angeles County, where voters had just overwhelmingly affirmed support for the Prop 47 reforms. Hochman said in an interview that he believes dynamics have changed since 2020, when the ascendant Black Lives Matter movement and a late burst of Democratic defections propelled Gascón to victory.

“In 2020 we were dealing with the George Floyd incident, protests in the streets, we had an LA mayor famously change his endorsement on the eve of the election,” Hochman said. “You have a situation in 2024 where the data has disproven George Gascón’s promises that he’s going to keep people safe with his extreme decriminalization policies.”

Gascón’s campaign manager, Jamarah Hayner, conceded that the incumbent faces a difficult path to reelection. But she said he has been battle-hardened by constant recall threats and has worked to shore up Democratic support.

“It’s forced us into a permanent campaign mode,” Hayner said. “We’ve been very clear in saying this isn’t just about George in that if we stand together as progressives, as Democrats, we will beat this back.”

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Criminology and Criminal Justice M.A. Online

University of Houston-Clear Lake's (UHCL)'s online Criminology and Criminal Justice Master of Arts was designed for students seeking to enhance their criminal justice career or to transition into the criminal justice field from another industry. This online degree program provides the knowledge and training for a wide range of professions. These include policing or law enforcement positions, corrections officers, investigators, crime analysts, probation officers, juvenile counselors, and victim services specialists, among others.

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With both a criminology and criminal justice component, this degree will help you deepen your understanding of why crime occurs and how it's measured. You'll also learn about the criminal justice system and how the public response to crime involving communities. Through carefully crafted coursework, you'll examine the many layers of contemporary crime and delve into topics like corrections, courts, ethics, juvenile justice, race and justice, terrorism and homeland security, victimology, and more.

The Criminology and Criminal Justice Master of Arts requires 36 credit hours for students completing a thesis and 33 hours for students who choose the internship or additional coursework option. It is available for any student with a bachelor's degree in any academic field.

Why You Should Choose the Criminology and Criminal Justice Master of Arts at UHCL

Faculty expertise.

The professors who teach coursework for the program come from diverse backgrounds, and many have expertise in both criminology and criminal justice. Some also have real-world criminal justice experience, including holding positions as law enforcement officers. 

Alumni Job Prospects

Many graduates of the program, like alum Troy Finner , have gone on to land careers as police chiefs and administrators, proving that the program focuses on creating criminal justice leaders. 

Faculty Involvement in True Crime

UHCL has had faculty involvement in true crime as well as media reporting to help guide crime and justice policy and practices in the real world. For example, Assistant Professor Hae Rim  shared her expertise on the Netflix series, "I Am a Stalker"  in 2022.

Range of Career Options, with Lucrative Salary Possibilities

Whether you want to pursue a career as a forensic science technician, correctional officer, or detective, UHCL's online Criminology and Criminal Justice Master of Arts can prepare you for a variety of criminal justice/criminology careers. First-line supervisor of police and detectives can make more than $100,000 a year.

Invest a Little For a Big Return

*Students receive a tuition and fee break by taking more courses per semester. Use the tuition calculator to compare how tuition and fees vary the more courses you take per semester. The calculated tuition and fee total is an estimate and may be subject to change. Excludes special fees that do not affect all students.

Office of Admissions

Phone: 281-283-2500 Fax: 281-283-2522 Email: [email protected] SSCB 1.101 2700 Bay Area Blvd, Box 13 Houston, TX 77058-1002 Office Hours: Mon-Fri, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.