What all is involved in criminal justice schooling?

kalistburg: What all is involved in criminal justice schooling?
I plan to go to school to receive my bachelor’s in criminal justice as a prerequisite to join the local police force, but I am curious as to what all is involved in it.

Can anyone let me know what all I will be learning, what all I will be doing, ect?

Thank you very much.

Answers and Views:

Answer by TaffySam
It really depends on where you going. If is a bachelor’s of arts or science. Overall in with a bachelor’s of arts you study the system of criminal justice. Everything from police systems and how they work to community corrections and how they work. You can narrow your focus to just studying about the police systems.

I got by degree in Criminal Justice. I ended up trying to study everything. I took courses in Gangs, Police and Police Systems, Correctional Counseling, Community Corrections, Women and Violence, Terrorism, Hate Crime and Policy. The main courses they like you to study are Statistics in Criminal Justice to understand how they come up with various forms of data. And Therories, its mainly a course to understand what works and doesn’t work in the criminal justice field. For example if 2 cops together patroling works as well as just one cop.

It’s a lot to explain but depending on where you going you will have a wide breadth to study. I ended up going to community corrections after taking the course and correctional counseling. The really cool thing about the criminal justice course is that you can expand. Where I went to school they had Forensic Anthropology, although it wasn’t a criminal justice course it was counted as a criminal justice course.

Overall I can say you will be learning everything about the criminal justice system and how it works. And again it all depends on where you taking the course at.

Criminolgy is the science of criminal justice, this is where you would a bachelor of science degree. I don’t know much about criminolgy I did take a course in it, but I didn’t really study it.

Overall my advice is to take all types of classes, if you are going into the police force it will be helpful because it will give you a background to study. But at the same time you might find something else you want to do like probation or parole officers.

Like my professors always told me, Criminal Justice is a good course because people are always committing crimes and crimes are always changing which is why they need to be studied. Good Luck!!!