It’s Personal? Exploring Criminal Justice Involvement and Victimization in CJ Major and Career Selection

• In Event: 2484 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 09. Higher Education 2

Abstract

Criminal Justice (CJ) programs have seen exponential growth across the US, as criminal justice “came into its own” as a discipline concomitant with the rise of mass incarceration in the 1970s. The CJ major is now one of top ten most awarded degrees in the country. There is a nascent literature which has explored the social, psychological and demographic characteristics of criminal justice majors, primarily of white 4-year undergraduates, to determine motivations for entering into the major and a CJ career. There have been no studies to date which have focused on CJ majors in majority-minority colleges or 2 year colleges. This largely exploratory study hypothesized that such students would have criminal justice involvement or victimization experiences that may influence their decision to enter into a CJ major and career, and that their motivations for entering the major would differ from their four-year counterparts. The current exploratory study was conducted through a self-administered survey of 110 undergraduates in a large urban, diverse, open-admissions 2 year college in New York.

Authors

• Colleen Eren, City University of New York-LaGuardia Community College

• Shirley Leyro, Borough of Manhattan Community College