Master of Arts in Criminal Justice: Curriculum

Advance justice and the rule of law with specialized skills.

In this 10-course, 30-credit-hour program, you’ll gain interdisciplinary knowledge of law enforcement, courts, corrections, and corporate security and learn to apply criminal justice best practices in a variety of contexts.

Choose to specialize in security management or select electives that best suit your personal and professional goals.

Course abstracts are meant to provide a high-level course overview and are subject to change based on term, faculty and/or institutional requirements. View the official course descriptions as written in the Michigan State University Academic Catalog and in adherence to institutional accreditation standards.

Courses

Core

CJ 801 Crime Causation, Prevention and Control

Experience an in-depth review of theoretical perspectives on crime and examine the link between these theories and crime prevention and control in the United States. You’ll gain a mastery of the major criminological theories and learn to apply them to criminal justice policy and real-life scenarios.

CJ 810 Proseminar in Criminal Justice

Gain an in-depth understanding of the criminal justice topics that interest you most. You’ll review and critique academic articles, review non-academic literature and media, and author a semester paper on your criminal justice topic of choice.

CJ 812 Criminal Justice Management Seminar

Examine organizational theory and behavior among criminal justice agencies. You’ll explore organization and policy planning, budgeting, forecasting, human resource management, and project implementation in the context of police administration, courts and corrections. You’ll also pay special attention to constraints on policy development and issues with policy implementation to understand the variety of management styles used in these organizations and their strengths and limitations.

CJ 857 Criminal Justice Behavior and Ethics

Exploration of ethical considerations and dilemmas. Moral, legal and normative obligations of the state and criminal justice professionals. Philosophies and theories of ethics and deviance.

CJ 889 Fundamentals of Basic and Translational Research

Methods and techniques of criminal justice research and evaluation, including survey methods, systematic observation, analysis of existing data, experimentation, and introduction to evaluation design. Ethical issues in research design and procedures.

CJ 896 Policy Analysis Under Condition of Change (Capstone)

Exemplify your potential role in shaping criminal justice or security-related programs or policy at the organizational, local, state or federal level. In this capstone experience, you’ll choose an issue to resolve with a program or policy change, and present the formulation, adoption and implementation of changes in a setting of your choice.

Elective

CJ 802 Proseminar in Law Enforcement Intelligence and Analysis

Explore law enforcement intelligence as an analytic tool for case development and resource allocation. Examine historical, ethical, legal and operational issues affecting current practice.

CJ 803 Foundations in Homeland Security

Gain a broad, up-to-date, multidisciplinary understanding of homeland security. Explore a variety of issues through multiple sources, themes, methodologies and learning activities. Examine topics like public policy, public administration, law, criminal justice, and the social/behavioral impacts of terrorism and homeland security.

CJ 809 Issues in Criminal Justice (topics vary)

Complete an in-depth analysis of a selected special issue in criminal justice research and management.

CJ 822 Comparative Criminal Justice

Achieve a deeper understanding of the criminal justice system in the United States by exploring how similar systems operate in other countries. Through this comparative lens, you’ll examine common law, civil law, socialist law and Islamic law, then focus on the nature of policing, courts and corrections around the world.

CJ 823 Globalization of Crime

Explore comparative criminology and its relevance in the context of the global world. Examining issues like human trafficking, firearm violence and money laundering, you’ll assess the challenges of applying criminology to understand crime, victimization and crime control in the global context.

CJ 837 The Intelligence Process and Counterterrorism

Examine the meaning and concepts of domestic and international terrorism. You’ll study law enforcement intelligence and an integration of intelligence and terrorism to gain a deeper understanding of counterterrorism.

CJ 838 Terrorism

Explore the origins, history and mutable definitions of terrorism. Through an examination of influential contemporary and historical terrorist movements, you’ll study ideologies, organizational features and state responses. Other topics include terrorist target selection, motivations for political violence and geo-political dynamics, and how these factors explain and perpetuate terrorist violence.

CJ 839 Analytic Thinking and Intelligence

Explore how analytic processes, tools, applications and contemporary issues are used in law enforcement intelligence processes.

CJ 845 Environmental Risk Perception and Decision-Making

Examine how risk perception, decision-making and uncertainty impact scenarios in an environmental or criminological context. Using case studies, you’ll explore how these factors affect outcomes and learn to apply these concepts to your personal and professional life.

CJ 847 Global Risks, Conservation and Criminology

Examine the theories, actors, characteristics and legal instruments associated with risk, conservation and criminology related to globalization. Through current case studies in criminological conservation, you’ll explore the international “environmental crime crisis,” the policy surrounding it and strategies for intervention.

CJ 850 Product Counterfeiting

Advanced theoretical and empirical perspectives from criminology, victimology, and organizational behavior to analyze the crime of product counterfeiting.

CJ 856 Advanced Topics in Policing (topics vary)

Special topics on policing such as crime analysis, problem solving, police recruitment, retention and development, police behavior and ethics. Spring, 3 credits.

CJ 870 Introduction to Crime Analysis

Gain an understanding of the theoretical foundations of crime analysis. You’ll learn about the techniques and processes used by law enforcement agencies to document and respond to patterns of crime and gain an appreciation of the complex and evolving world of crime and intelligence analysis work. Complete this course ready to explain the historical evolution of law enforcement practices that led to the varying roles of analysts and analysis in law enforcement and apply modern analysis techniques.

CJ 871 Advanced Crime Analysis

Learn to apply advanced intelligence and crime analysis skills and techniques. You’ll complete this course able to apply these techniques to common issues faced by law enforcement agencies and demonstrate an understanding of how advances in modern crime analysis affect the future of the field.

CJ 872 Open-Source Information Analysis

Apply modern intelligence techniques to collect and analyze open-source information. You’ll complete this course with an ability to validate data sources, as well as knowledge of the history of open-source data collection and an understanding of the ethical issues surrounding collecting data from public sources.

CJ 885 Security Management

Explore the organization and management of security operations in business, industry, and government. You’ll gain an understanding of the historical and contemporary concepts that impact safety and loss prevention in different contexts.

CJ 886 Security Administration

Master administrative and quantitative techniques for security operations, and examine security in corporate and global contexts. You’ll conduct statistical analyses, examination of financial statements, and operations research through computer techniques.

CJ 890 Independent Study

Select a criminal justice topic of interest, then conduct individual research and writing under faculty supervision.

CJ 894 Practicum/Internship

Observe, study and work in select criminal justice agencies. Participate in domestic and foreign criminal justice systems. Use CJ 894 to work with the Michigan State Police First District Cold Case Unit and get hands on experience working with real cold cases. This course is available in the fall, spring and summer and provides a maximum of 6 credits for CJ students and 3 credits for LEIA students.

Specialization

CJ 801 Crime Causation, Prevention and Control

Experience an in-depth review of theoretical perspectives on crime and examine the link between these theories and crime prevention and control in the United States. You’ll gain a mastery of the major criminological theories and learn to apply them to criminal justice policy and real-life scenarios.

CJ 812 Criminal Justice Management Seminar

Examine organizational theory and behavior among criminal justice agencies. You’ll explore organization and policy planning, budgeting, forecasting, human resource management, and project implementation in the context of police administration, courts and corrections. You’ll also pay special attention to constraints on policy development and issues with policy implementation to understand the variety of management styles used in these organizations and their strengths and limitations.

CJ 885 Security Management

Explore the organization and management of security operations in business, industry, and government. You’ll gain an understanding of the historical and contemporary concepts that impact safety and loss prevention in different contexts.

CJ 886 Security Administration

Master administrative and quantitative techniques for security operations, and examine security in corporate and global contexts. You’ll conduct statistical analyses, examination of financial statements, and operations research through computer techniques.

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