The Criminal Justice Department is one of eight departments in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. As such, the Criminal Justice Department works collaboratively to investigate and solve social problems that develop as the result of crime and disorder. The overarching mission of the department is to contribute to the criminal justice professions through evaluation, research, and service.

The Department of Criminal Justice strives to provide the highest quality, scientific based evaluation in the field. The Department offers a variety courses to accomplish this objective. These courses offered at the undergraduate and graduate levels, are in the areas of police corrections, law, crime, and paralegal studies. Many of our graduates work with a number of criminal justice departments and agencies, and they make a significant contribution to those agencies successes.

The faculty in the Department of Criminal Justice all have active research agendas. The faculty have researched drug courts, juvenile probation programs, community policing, police traffic stops as they relate to racial profiling, drug enforcement and treatment, police personnel practices, women prisoner rights and issues, gender issues in law enforcement, police administration, hate crimes, terrorism, and constitutional law issues. The faculty have been published in many of the leading legal and criminal justice scholarly journals. Faculty members also have published a number of textbooks and several are the leaders in their discipline. A number of technical reports for criminal justice agencies have been authored.

The Department has an exemplary record of service. Faculty members work closely with many criminal justice agencies in the service area on real problems affecting community safety and crime. The faculty serve on committees and hold office in criminal justice professional agencies, such as the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, the Western Society of Criminology, and the Western and Pacific Criminal Justice Association.