Criminal Justice University

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Students at UC Santa Cruz have been occupying the administration building (Kerr Hall) at the school for the past three days. According to several of the the students (over 370 are involved in the protest) there is no way they are going to give up leading many to suspect that the police will soon begin forcibly removing them.  This all started after the regents board at the school approved a 32 % increase in tuition. The students are concerned that they simply won’t be able to afford going to school there any longer as that is a very large increase for them to absorb.  The school says they have no plans to negotiate with the students and have already warned them that they will have the police come and clear the students out if they don’t leave on their own.  The students expect that will happen very soon. Actually, this protest is one of several demonstrations going on in California universities this past week. On Friday night, 41 protesters occupying a building at UC Berkley were arrested and cited for trespassing (and quickly released).  On Thursday, 52 students were arrested at UC Davis after they refused to leave the school’s administration building where they were also protesting tuition increases.  UCLA’s Campbell Hall was also occupied for several hours this past Thursday by protesting students.  The tuition hikes will start in January when they rates will go up 15% which is more than double the average public tuition hike last year. On average, tuition and fees at the nation’s universities increased by 6.5%.  An interesting note is that students that qualify for financial aid that have families making less than $70,000 per year will have their tuition covered.  Which makes me wonder if the reason why the tuition increases are happening isn’t really being totally driven by the fact that they can charge more and have Federal grants and funding cover the costs for a majority of the students.  The schools adamantly reject that stating that they are being forced to raise the tuition to keep the university open.  In any event, it will be very interesting to follow these protests over the next couple of weeks.

If you are found guilty of indecent exposure among other possible punishments you will most likely find yourself on the registered sex offender list. Here is a map of the U.S. with the number of registered sex offenders by State:

There are several crimes that will end up causing you to get your name added to the registered sex offender list, one crime is indecent exposure and it certainly is not the worst possible offense that will land you on this list.  However, it’s an example of one that seems to be very subjective.  Last month (October 2009) there were a couple of cases which I think are interesting as they point out that what everyone thinks or assumes is indecent varies pretty wildly. While this can lead to interesting discussions and even heated debates, the reality of the situation is that as a matter of law whether an act is indecent or not varies by State and to a wide degree by the people investigating the situation. Take for example two recent cases that were in the news and posted all over the Internet.

The first case is the case of Eric Williamson, the Virginia man that was arrested for making breakfast and coffee in the nude… okay that’s not the whole story. Apparently he was sipping coffee in clear view of a window that faced a public sidewalk.  A mother and child were walking by, took offense and called the police.  This resulted in the police arresting Williamson and charging him with indecent exposure.  Williamson was in the privacy of his own home true enough, but does that really protect him from an indecent exposure charge?  Would a reasonable person do what he did?  I don’t think so.  It’s one thing to drink coffee naked in an interior room of the house completely out of the view of anyone passing by your house and quite another to stand in front of your window in plain view of the public, butt naked sucking down your favorite home-brewed java.

So I did a little bit of research on the Internet as believe me this could go on for days (the research) if I didn’t cut it off at some point.  Let’s just say there are thousands of cases of indecent exposure on the Internet to read about.  Anyway here is the most basic legal definition I could find:

Indecent exposure is a crime that is defined as exposing one’s genitals or socially deemed “private parts” (such as behind or breasts) in a public place where others are present and may witness the act. A person who commits indecent exposure does so intentionally with an understanding that his/her conduct will likely alarm and offend others.

Well, that’s a tough one… Did Williamson intentionally expose himself?  Does lack of common sense come intoplay here at all?  In a case like this how does one exactly prove that Williamson had intent to expose himself to the mother and child walking by the house.  Well, I still think he is guilty because a reasonable person would close the blinds, drapes, etc. and simply just not do what this jackass did.  I also just have a problem with giving a person a pass because they are a moron.

In a another recent case (October 2009) we have the story of a 33 year-old Pennsylvania man, Michael Parziale. Well if all cases were this clear, everything would be a lot easier. Okay so this idiot allegedly takes pleasure in sitting in his car in public places with his door open and then masturbating while women walk by (well he also is allegedly perfectly comfortable walking up to women and doing the same thing). Okay, so that is a clear case of indecent exposure. This guy is clearly exposing his private parts intentionally in a public place and should be quite certain that this will both alarm and offend just about anyone with a brain. The only question here is… Why?  What can cause someone to behave in such a bizarre way?  There can be no doubt that the indecent exposure laws were clearly written to protect the public from people like Parizale.

So in this sometimes crazy world where it can be pretty hard to shock people where do we draw the line?  Do we arrest everyone that comes close to the line (like Williamson) or do we just go after the people that completely blow past the line and blatantly violate the law (like Parizale)?  Obviously, we don’t really have to choose… Breaking the law is breaking the law and there is no such thing as only breaking the law a little bit.  Like many things though it is not 100% black and white and there is at least a little bit of gray involved.  I guess in either case the judge or jury will take the decision in the cases of Williamson and Parizale.  The moral of the story is if in doubt… throw on a pair of pants, a robe, ANYTHING!

We got a lot of response regarding crime facts in the U.S. so we decided to continue the series and to add some statistics that looked into each State and compared violent crimes on a per capita basis. This resulted in us coming across the following chart at the U.S. Census Bureau:

Take a look at Washington D.C.  that’s something!  It’s interesting to note where our nation’s capital ranks in the area of violent crime.  Is that odd?  It seems so to us.  In any event, there are quite a few States that are considerably worse off than others in this one aspect (not that there aren’t potential perils anywhere you live).

Frustrated by attacks on their campus, a couple of University of Washington students decided to take matters into their own hands and created a vigilante group to protect areas around the campus where attacks have occurred over the past year.  The group is led by Luis Garcia (left) and Stanley Luong (right) who both were victims of assault themselves on the campus. They put up a page on the social media site Facebook to recruit members, but it was quickly pulled down by the social media company.

They both got concealed license permits and bought handguns and now essentially walk the campus every night as “bait” for would-be criminals.  According to the UW Daily Newspaper, there have been ten assaults and robberies in the campus area in just two months, so Luong and Garcia are correct in identifying the problem.  The only issue is that of legality.  It is definitely illegal to carry a concealed handgun on college campuses in Washington.  So given that there is a problem and the students can’t legally protect themselves with their 2nd amendment right to bear arms, what is the solution?

It would be ideal for the University of Washington to step in here and beef up the security patrols and/or the local police.  While the students are doing what comes fairly natural to them, in fact, they are putting themselves in grave danger.  Some may consider this to be courageous, unfortunately it is probably more just dangerous.  They aren’t really just putting themselves in harm’s way.  They may potentially cause a situation to escalate more than necessary and there are lots of possible ramifications of that.

We hope that the law enforcement officials in the area will step in and take care of this situation before it gets further out of hand.  While in some cases vigilantes are necessary, it doesn’t seem like a college campus should be one of those cases.

You can see a video by their local news station here.

CJU spends a lot of time talking about criminal justice careers and everything that prepares someone for a criminal justice job including a great education. Sometimes it is hard for people to envision the types of classes that someone would take in order to graduate with a criminal justice degree. We thought we would put together a list of some of the really cool classes that most criminal justice majors take as they earn their degree (and possibly some just really fun extra courses):

Intro to The Criminal Justice System – Okay, this is not so cool or exciting but is a foundation class that most programs will start with. Generally this is a study of all of the agencies that exist in our court system including: the courts, the police, prosecutors, public defenders, and corrections (officers and facilities). This one is sexy, but just makes sure everyone was paying attention in their civics classes in high school.

Retail Security – Well this is starting to sound more fun, but wait are we talking about mall cops (not that there is anything wrong with that at all)?  In fact, it is about loss prevention and general tactics used to make sure that shoplifting and other theft does not occur.  This is a much maligned career (partially due to the recent Mall Cop movie starring Paul Blart), but is a HUGE problem challenging our retail industry.

Crime Prevention – Now we are getting to some law enforcement work, we are probably starting to get your attention. This class talks about different times of crime prevention strategies that can be deployed by police departments, community organizations, or any other group looking to reduce the crime rates around them (local businesses, etc.).  So again, the focus here is really on avoiding a crime, not investigating crimes.

Forensic Biology – This sounds like some CSI stuff (very cool).  In fact, this is exactly about crime scene investigations and different techniques for collecting evidence.  This course covers topic like ecological, entomological, and biotechnological techniques used by law enforcement personnel across the country.

The typical criminal justice program will offer somewhere around 20 to 50 different classes for a student to choose from to fulfill their degree requirements.  It is important to take a look at the classes that are offered before you plan your class schedules to make sure that you are getting exactly what you are interested and/or need to learn to advance your criminal justice career.

We can’t cover all of the programs offered by every university in this one blog article but did want to wet your whistles and to let you know that the criminal justice field is complex and full of lots of specializations.  So it’s not normally as easy as the criminologists make it look on TV.

So we know that there are many top 10 lists that people would love to be on, this is not one of them.  This is a list reserved for the worst of the worst and people that are tied to organized crime of some sort (gangs or mob), tied to drug trafficking, or other horrible crimes.  This is the list of the top 10 American Fugitives (people that are wanted by the U.S. government).  The ultimate resource for this list is located here: http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugitives/fugitives.htm.  We were going to cover this list to try and bring it to your attention but it’s actually a federal crime if you don’t reproduce the list properly so it seems safest to just point you in the direction of the official list.

But we think it is interesting to ask yourself if you could name any of the top 10 people without going to the site first to check it out.  I would guess that most Americans would identify Usama Bin Laden as one of the top 10, but I would guess that most Americans could not name another person on this list.  That seems to be something that we should try to address as a society.  These are people that are extremely dangerous and that we need to assist the authorities in any way possible with apprehending.

Do you know what you should do if you do spot one of America’s most wanted?  Here is a list of your options:

1) You can fill out the tip form on the FBI site: https://tips.fbi.gov/

2) You can call the FBI at: 1-800-CALLFBI

3) You can visit or call your local FBI office which you can lookup here.

4) You always have the option of calling 911, but please be sure that this is a real emergency before you do that.  If it is not, you can just contact your local authorities at your earliest convenience.

Please give this a little more than a passing thought.  You came to CJU because you are either interested in a criminal justice career or you saw something closely related.  Stay aware of these top criminals and stay alert as you never know when you may possibly cross paths with one of America’s most wanted.  In any event, you now know what to do if you do spot one of these fugitives.

Our judicial system does an amazing job day after day, but even the best of systems can be flawed.  Given the number of crimes committed in the U.S. and the number of people convicted every year it does seem like there are very few cases that get over-turned.  With that said, it is hard to say exactly how many more people that are in prison are actually telling the truth when they say they didn’t commit the crime.  Another debate which is actively being raised is how much should we compensate people that have been wrongfully convicted and imprisoned.  It’s a tough call for sure.  It seems to us that there should be some level of compensation and I do think it is important to raise the level of awareness as to why these people were falsely convicted.  As you can see from the table below, eyewitness misidentification was a factor in most of these cases.  It’s also true that there were a few cases that the forensic scientists appear to have gotten wrong.  Here is the list of people that have been exonerated after 14 or more years (that is what the Years column in the table below represents… how long it took for them to be exonerated):

More information on all of these cases can be found at: Innocent Project.

We bring this issue up to remind everyone currently in the criminal justice profession how much we can impact the lives of people (mostly in a positive way, but sometimes not so much).  These types of reminders help to make sure that we apply good critical thinking on our jobs every day.

We wish all of these people the best as  they adjust to life after prison and after being exonerated.

Well there are some things that as a nation, you just don’t want to lead the World in and one of those things is number of crimes committed on an annual basis.  The U.S. repeatedly finds itself at the top of that list.  Unfortunately, we lead the World in many kinds of criminal activities. This is partially driven by the sheer number of people we have in the U.S., but given just how much distance there is between the U.S. and the rest of the World there must be more to it than that. Let’s focus on the top 10 most concerning facts about crime in the U.S.  Many of these may come as a surprise to you although based on how many people are impacted by crimes every year in the U.S., you may not be surprised in the slightest.

1. The United States has nearly 12 million crimes committed every year.  This is the most in the World with the runner-up having only 6 million crimes.  That’s two times worse than the runner-up nation!
2. The United States currently is holding over 2 million prisoners.  This means that we have the highest percentage of prisoners relative to our population in the World.  Combine this with #1 and you can see we have a lot of minor criminal offenses and a lot of people on probation and parole.
3. Almost 100,000 rapes occur in the United States every year.  This is also the highest number for all countries in the United Nations.
4. There are nearly 500,000 robberies in the United States every year, this is the second highest number for all countries in the United Nations.
5. There are approximately 1,000,000 police officers in the United States (the highest in the World).
6. There are over 16,000 murders in the United States every year (this is second worst in the World).
7. There are over 1.2 million car thefts every year in the United States (this is the highest in the World).
8. One out of every five people will be a victim of a crime every year in the United States again this is the worst in the World.
9. Even with the worst crime rates in the World, 82% of the U.S. population feels safe walking the streets at night and this is the 2nd best rate in the World.  Isn’t that interesting?
10. The software piracy rate is 20% in the United States.  This is the LOWEST in the World out of 107 countries in the survey!

As you can see, the United States is in an ominous position.  We have a monumental task ahead of us to control criminal activity and improve on several of these numbers.  The best way we can see to do that is to have more people aware of these problems and to encourage them to pursue criminal justice careers and to support our law enforcement officers in general.  Let’s hope that in the next decade we see ourselves falling behind other nations in terms of criminal activities because that is just one category we don’t want to be number one in any longer.

One of the most unique programs we have seen is a Fast Track program being offered by Hartnell College in Salinas, CA (Associate of Science Degree in Administration of Justice).  This online criminal justice degree can be completed in just three semesters or one year if you take classes through the summer!  This is an excellent program that we find to be incredibly creative and valuable for people just starting their criminal justice career (whether this is your first career job or a second career).  This degree prepares students for quick entry into law enforcement careers and in addition is a great service to the public as it helps students attract even more people into the criminal justice field.

If you are looking for a great start to your career and are motivated to start as soon as possible, we can’t honestly recommend a better option than going to Hartnell College to get your associate’s degree.  After completing that you can continue your studies there or pursue other online degree programs offered here at Criminal Justice University (like Kaplan’s advanced start bachelor of science in criminal justice degree and then the Master of Science in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati).  In theory you could possibly (with a lot of hard work) go from an associate’s to a master’s degree in three action-packed years.  That’s amazing!  NOTE:  we have not talked to each of these schools to test the viability of that education path, we are just using it as an example of what could be accomplished via online criminal justice degree programs.

Given the Hartnell example and the rest of the programs mentioned above, it is pretty easy to see why online colleges are doing so well now.  They are responding to the changing needs of society where time is of the essence and the ability to control your own schedule is critically important.

Another question we get emailed on frequently is “exactly how do I become a police officer.”  Well, the answer is that it really depends on a lot of different factors (where you live, what kind of officer you want to be, etc.).  With all of that said we will try to give a brief overview of what it takes to become a police officer.

Education – A high school diploma is required by most departments across the U.S. and preferential treatment is given to candidates with an associate’s degree or bachelor’s degree (not necessarily in Criminal Justice but that is helpful).  You can view several different criminal justice degree programs on this site, but let’s continue with the rest of the requirements for becoming a police officer.

Background – Police officers are subjected to background checks of course.  If you have a criminal record, this is most likely not the career for you.  Even if you just have excessive traffic violations (tickets) you should seriously consider what you are doing before you go down this path.  Assuming this is not problematic you can move to the next step.

Fitness – The perception of police officers being out of shape and eating doughnuts or Twinkies all day needs to be put out of your mind.  This is NOT the case!  You will need to be in a high state of physical conditioning to be accepted on the police force in most cities or municipalities.  The police academy will be an extreme shock to your body if you are not prepared for it so get into the best shape you can.

Exams – You will need to sit for a civil servant exam.  You should contact your local police department and/or city for information on how and where to take the exam in your area.  In addition to that you will be subjected to a physical exam and a series of interviews with police.  You need to be physically AND mentally tough to take up a career as a police officer.

Post Education – You should go into a career as a police officer realizing that you are committing to a continuous education career path.  Most police officers have a certain number of continuing education hours that they must take on an annual basis to help keep them ahead of the criminal element.  So don’t expect that you won’t have to crack a book or two after becoming an officer.

Becoming a police officer can be very rewarding but it is a challenge.  While there is a shortage of officers in nearly every State in the U.S., they will not or cannot take just any applicants for the job.  Make sure you are dedicated to becoming an officer and then get the right education and get prepared both physically and mentally for a career in law enforcement.

Hey, let’s be careful out there…