MSCJ 701 Crime and Organizational Theory into Practice
This course introduces student to the critical theories that help explain or give context to both criminal behavior and how organizations function. Particular emphasis is placed on applying the theoretical frameworks to policy formation and analysis.
MSCJ 702 Crisis Management and Media Relations
This course begins with the conceptual frameworks that explain how the modern 24/7 ‘mediated’ world impacts the way organizations, agencies, and firms function or relate to citizens and customers. Importantly, the class will show how agency leaders can avoid making problems or the perceptions of problems worse by mishandling or communicating. Case studies will be utilized to show students how to handle specific types of crisis management situations.
MSCJ 703 Budget Analysis
This class will teach students the core skills associated with the development and management of budgets for agencies or functional departments. Students will synthesize and apply budgeting concepts using Microsoft Excel through real-world examples and case studies
MSCJ 704 Assessing Organizational Performance
This course will build-off of previous coursework and learn more refined approaches to assessing the outcomes and methods organizations employ to meet their goals. This course will look at a broad range of topics and case studies from critical incidents to human resource issues.
MSCJ 705 Applied Data Analysis and Decision-Making
This class will teach students how to empirically analyze and present data for informed decision-making. Students will use Excel analyze macro level trend issues such as crime rates as well as micro level inter-departmental problems. This course is designed to ensure that students are informed consumers of administration statistics and prepare them for the advanced quantitative electives offered later in the curriculum.
MSCJ 706 Ethics and the Administration of Justice
The course will provide students with an overview of ethics and ethical dilemmas which practitioners will face in the course of their profession. Using both classical and modern models students will develop skills necessary to identify and evaluate ethical and moral challenges in policing, bioethics, and corporate practices.
MSCJ 811 Survey of Justice Administration
This course comprises a synthesis and application of organizational and administrative theories and concepts to the administration of the criminal justice system. The course uses a ‘systems’ or ‘interactionist’ approach in order to facilitate the students’ sensitivities and insights into their understanding of the principles by which all organizations, Criminal Justice or otherwise, operate. Thus, this course considers the critical orientations in which the CJ administration operates: Historical, psychological, managerial, sociological, and political economy.
MSCJ 812 Bureau Pathology in Justice Administration
This course shows relationships between the structures/processes of organizations & the "pathologies" to which organizations are prone, with particular emphasis on public sector & non-profit orgs. Students learn to apply & sharpen their understanding of the nature and causes of org. pathology by closely examining specific instances of org. failure to apply those lessons. Students also gain a deeper understanding of how mgmt. policy & employee behavior can undermine the efficient, effective and lawful delivery of goods and services by public, non-profit & private orgs.
MSCJ 813 Critical Problems in Forensic Administration
Students will gain a broad overview in how to evaluate the value of forensic psychology & forensic science assets in criminal investigations. Students learn how to understand, choose & become knowledgeable consumers of forensic psychology topics such as eyewitness evidence, psychological profiling, risk analysis & use of force decision-making. Forensic science mgmt issues such as the evaluation of criminalistics evidence, managing single & multiple forensic cases, evidence organization & categorization and lab back-logs will be discussed.
MSCJ 814 Policy Analysis and Program Evaluation
Graduate students will gain insight into the realm of program & policy evaluation. While the course will be aimed primarily at police program & policy evaluation, there will be many instances where general, broad sweeping concepts will be placed into a broader framework to accompany many aspects of the discipline in both the public as well as private sectors. Students will be exposed to fundamental models, theoretical constructs, and methodological approaches utilized within program & policy evals.
MSCJ 815 Special Topics in Justice Administration
This course is an overview of policy debates in criminal justice organizations, methods of resolving these debates and implementation of policy decisions. Students will work together in considering the background of policy debates, including the effect of their political contexts and, importantly, relevant empirical research and theories of criminal justice.
MSCJ 816 Applied Situational Crime Prevention
The Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) theoretical paradigm is the dominant construct under which modern crime control and prevention is based-on. This course is designed to advance the practitioner’s theoretical insights and extend those, through class projects, to immediately applying and evaluating the results. In this respect, the course can be viewed as an advanced applied methods course.
MSCJA 818 Responses to Crime Victimization
Provides students with a thorough overview of victim services, both from a theoretical & academic perspective, and a practical, applied perspective. Learning the history and evolution of victim rights & victim services, the most relevant models of responses to victimization, also learning more substantively about the types of victimizations practitioners must respond to. Includes a policy-oriented approach to studying victim response, both in critically analyzing past and current practices & in determining the best course of action for future best practices.
MSCJ 819 Sex Offenders and Offending
An interdisciplinary understanding of sex crimes and sex offenders drawing from theory & sex offender typologies, the course explores the similarities & differences among a variety of sex offenders. Following this background investigation a series of key sex offender research domains are further examined with profound policy implications: recidivism, specialization, offending over the life-course, sex offender registration & community notification, and the collateral consequences. Other topics: sex offender treatment programs & internet-based sex offending.
MSCJ 821 Corporate Risk Administration and Management
Examines the basic principles of admin/mgmt of loss prevention, protection & security. Managers in all organizations, including those focusing on security, must perform certain essential functions including organizing, leading, planning & controlling. The ultimate mission of the security/loss prevention component of a security organization is to protect people, property, proprietary information & other assets of the respective business. Consequences of occurrences from outside the business are the responsibility of the security organization.
MSCJ 822 Premises Liability and Crime Foreseeability
The course integrates material from the fields of security, law, crime prevention and premises liability. Through the vehicle of civil law, premises security liability is the civil liability of property owners to provide reasonable and adequate security to patrons and other invitees onto their premises. Security standards, recommendations and best practices for a variety of businesses and industries are examined utilizing a series of case studies.
MSCJ 823 Law for Private Sector Security Professionals
This course focuses on the expanding body of law that guides the actions of private security professionals as they protect life and property in a post 9/11 America. Key elements of security law are presented in the course including a discussion of trends in security liability lawsuits and possible ways to reduce liability.
MSCJ 824 Security and Loss Prevention
This course provides an overview of the foremost security and loss prevention issues facing businesses and other organizations in 21st Century America and reviews current management, fiscal, and physical countermeasures from internal and external threats employed by security professionals (e.g., chief executive officers, security managers and loss prevention specialists)
MSCJ 825 Emerging Trends in Security Technology
The course focuses on emerging trends, operating procedures, and the application of technology to meet the increased level of security in commercial, industrial and government organizations. It also examines legacy systems and new technologies, i.e., how do organizations effectively deploy changing security technological enhancements and upgrades to an existing security system? Finally, new technological advances in industry-specific environments are assessed using case studies.
MSCJ 826 International Risk Analysis
Social, political, & economic globalization sets the stage for this course. Increasingly, a firm’s success or failure is integrally related to factors in different countries, states, and jurisdiction. “Just in Time” logistics & the variances associated with political, economic, and social risks have a direct impact on both domestic & intl firms. The purpose of this course is to provide students with a hands-on experience in conducting the kind of intl risk analysis that is increasingly demanded.
MSCJ 831 Inspector General Administration
Persons employed in the capacity of inspector general investigators, internal auditors, and corporate management investigators will often be called upon to handle delicate and specialized investigations. This course will provide participants with an understanding of the both government and private sector procurement & contract standards. Pertinent accounting & legislative standards will be reviewed as well as some of the forensic tools available to investigators. The specific challenges of ethic and sexual harassment investigations and compliance audits will be reviewed as well.
MSCJ 832 Forensic Interviewing and Interrogation
Theory, knowledge, methodology, & practical application required for conducting a proper cognitive interview, obtaining a "pure version statement," analyzing statements, and understanding the basics of nationally accepted interviews structures such as Reid's Nine Steps to Interrogation will be covered. This course will also provide an understanding of scientific & technical underpinnings of the forensic interview process. Participants will review academically peer-reviewed articles concerning this field & proprietary private section non-published research.
MSCJ 833 Financial Fraud Investigations
Introduce the concept of financial fraud investigations. The course will provide students with a general/introductory understanding of forensic accounting and the basic skills needed to perform forensic accounting/ financial fraud investigations. Students will receive instruction in: identifying fraud schemes, an explanation of the legal elements of fraud (for state and federal jurisdictions), as well as the necessary analytical techniques utilized in uncovering fraud and its prevention through effective detection systems.
MSCJ 834 An Academic Approach to Investigative Technique and Management
The most common method by which investigative personnel learn proper investigative techniques is through the rote method, more commonly referred to “OJT” (on-the job-training) in the professional world. This course will provide the academically-rooted understanding of key phases of the investigative technique, from the original opening of an investigation through the ultimate conclusion either in the courtroom or the boardroom.
MSCJ 835 Specialized Investigations: Retail Fraud
Providing insight into the mechanics of various forms of retail theft, including but not limited to: cashier theft, return fraud, back door receiving theft, vendor/merchandiser theft, external theft types such price tag manipulations, collusion with employees, supply line/distribution channel thefts, & single and multi-unit level acctg frauds. A review of available research concerning the thought process of theft offenders will be conducted to hopefully gain an insight into the motivations, and lack of concern/fear of countermeasures by the offenders.
MSCJ 836 Organized Retail Crime
Organized retail crime is now understood and accepted as a true crime type by state and federal legislative bodies. This course will provide participants with an understanding of the operationalizations of ORC, current technological and non-technological countermeasures, and the current status of ORC legislation as well as the future of deterrent efforts.
MSCJ 841 Homeland Security and Emergency Management Anchor Course
The organization & operation of Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) will be examined. The course covers major topics related to homeland security & emergency mgmt including a history & organization of DHS, a review of key legislation, laws, and directives, introduction to basic concepts of infrastructure protection, risk management, threat assessment & prioritization, jurisdiction/coordination between agencies, issues in communication, hazard response teams, contingency of operations planning (COOP), basic threats & counter-terrorism strategies, public health & emergency preparedness.
MSCJ 842 Operations Research
An important part of leadership and management across all sectors of social and economic life consists of defining and solving many types of problems. Inherent in the problem solving process is the task of decision-making. The best decisions are those that are made based on empirical analytics. Such decisions usually require the use of data. In this class, the overall objective will be to improve student’s ability to model situations and analyze data to make intelligent, fact-based decisions.
MSCJ 843 Critical Incident Analysis
Defining and analyzing critical incidents using a formalized case study approach is a new practice in what is an emerging field, ‘emergency management’. This course is designed to teach students how to approach analyzing incidents from an empirical perspective and by applying the Critical Incident Theoretical Model pioneered by the Academy for Critical Incident Analysis (ACIA) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
MSCJ 844 Fundamentals of Emergency Management
An introduction to emergency management & the role of the emergency manager in dealing with a variety of threats. We will compare & contrast different events, learn the history of emergency management, understand new and emerging disasters and hazards, learn the overlapping phases of disaster, and understand the roles of different levels of government. Emergency management represents a challenging field because many people may ignore warnings, or are unable to prepare for disasters.
MSCJ 846 Data Mining for Intelligence Analysis
Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) is an interdisciplinary area, drawing upon research in statistics, databases, pattern recognition, machine learning, data visualization, optimization, and high-performance computing. The course presents data mining techniques that have proven to be effective in recognizing patterns & making predictions within various application settings. The principle focus of the course will be to explore & develop novel applications of data mining techniques to the analysis corporate security, criminal justice, & critical incident data.
MSCJ 847 Emergency Crisis and Victim Response
The purpose of this course is to learn about the types of events that lead to victimization outside of interpersonal crime, the effects of these events on victims, and the skills and resources in place to provide immediate and on-going crisis intervention for the people who survive these events and for those are left behind when lives are lost.
MSCJ 851 Information and Cyber Data Intelligence
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the prescient technical, legal, and ethical concerns associated with the acquisition and analysis of large tracts of digitized mico-level and macro-level data. It begins with a review of the topical policy & key technologies that are employed by practitioners. From there the course will explore the concept of privacy & the ethical dilemmas associated with the use of these technologies. It concludes with a review of “good” and “bad” cases where the assemblage of technologies and policies has led to socially desired & undesired consequences.
MSCJ 852 Cyber Surveillance Law and Governance
The purpose of this course is to extend the students understanding of the legal and oversight frameworks that define and delimit both private and sector practitioners with respect to domains of cybercrime and surveillance. To this end the students are introduced to an analytical approach that integrates the legal philosophy and notions of "privacy" with those of oversight and accountability-students are taught to view the latter as a means to the former. The course begins with a review of privacy and uses that as an entree to understanding the theories of governance. From there the course delves into applying these concepts to three distinct domains of application, law enforcement, public (civil) records, and private records. This course is explicitly designed to have students learn the nuances of relevant case law and understand the practical limitations and prospects of it.
MSCJ 853 Forensic Management of Digital Evidence
An overview of digital evidence and computer crime by focusing on a systematic approach to investigating a crime based on the scientific method. Topics are data recovery, remote storage, file systems of various systems and procedure and tools for properly collecting and examining digital evidence from computers. This course demonstrates how computers are extensions of traditional crime scenes and how the associated digital evidence can be useful in a variety of investigations including computer intrusions and violent crimes.
MSCJ 854 Geo-Spatial and Crime Mapping Analysis
Leading research in the field describes how crime & geospatial mapping is evolving to take advantage of modernized crime theories & capacities of computing power. This advanced quant. methods course incorporates GIS (geographic information systems) into risk analysis and criminal justice. The course synthesizes theory & application into a hands-on approach to many of the issues a risk management, loss prevention, or crime analyst will face in pursuit of their work. It also brings in some public health perspectives on mitigating risk, disease, and crime.
MSCJ 855 Cyber Criminology
This course provides an introduction for novices, and a deeper understanding, of cyber deviance and its control. This course takes the perspective that an individual or groups of individuals are perpetrators of cyber crime and deviance. In addition, it uses theory to understand the nature of cybercrime. Emphasis will be given to criminals and victims, law enforcement, state and federal laws, criminological theories, and the development of research topics in cybercrimes.
MSCJ 856 Cybercrime and Digital Law Enforcement
The emergence of modern information-based societies in which the exercise of economic, political, and social power increasingly depends on the opportunities to access, manipulate, and use information and information infrastructure has created opportunities for new crimes and new threats to civil society and global security, as well as for new law enforcement and national security responses. This course explores how a "networked" world has bred new crimes and new responses, and investigates how information and communication technology (ICT) has become a tool, a target, and a place of criminal activity and national security threats, as well as a mechanism of response.
MSCJ 861 Forensic Science: Crime Scene to Courtroom 3 crs.
The course will engage students in supervised research in forensic Science. The goal of this course is to allow the student to demonstrate their research capability under the supervision of university faculty.
MSCJ 862 Crime Lab Management: Utilizing Science for Justice 3 crs.
This course presents an overview of crime laboratory management. As an organization, the crime laboratory does not fit neatly into any particular mold. It has components of both the public and private sectors, and, in many cases, has civilian and sworn employees. For this reason it is important for crime laboratory directors and other administrators charged with the management of a forensic science entity to understand how this entity fits into the criminal justice system.
MSCJ 863 Quality Assurance/Quality Control in the Crime Laboratory 3 crs.
An overview of key components of Quality Assurance in the crime laboratory. The students will be introduced to what is required in the planning and implementation of a quality system in the crime laboratory including the development of a quality manual, the need to produce sound scientific data using appropriate standards and controls, developing written procedures and method validation. The course will also assist the student in understanding how to perform a quality system audit.
MSCJ 864 Current Topics Affecting Forensic Science 3 crs.
This course is an overview of policy debates in forensic science organizations, methods of resolving these debates and implementation of policy decisions. Students will work together in considering the background of policy debates, including the effect of their political contexts and, importantly, relevant empirical research.