Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice

Personnel trends in law enforcement over the past 15 years have stressed the importance of education in addition to time in service when considering candidates for promotion. In addition, candidates seeking entry into state police forces or federal law enforcement agencies are much more competitive if they possess a bachelor's degree. Aspen's Bachelor Degree Program provides you with the critical and current knowledge needed in today's law enforcement community. Dramatically increase your potential (without setting foot on a campus) through our degree completion program.

The goals of the program are to provide students with the ability to: Explain the scientific study of crime, criminals, the law-making process, the criminal justice system, and the treatment of offenders. Develop critical thinking, analytical, and interpersonal skills applicable to real-world problems. Implement innovative solutions for law enforcement, criminal investigation, and management and administration of criminal justice related activities. Achieve career goals and rapid advancement in criminal justice and related fields.

Bachelor Degree Program Admission Requirements: This program is designed to benefit law-enforcement professionals who have yet to earn an undergraduate degree. Aspen University's degree requirement is the equivalent of 120 credit hours of earned credit. All candidates must submit a completed application. In addition, candidates must submit the following: Verification of High School graduation, GED, or the equivalency. Verification of access to appropriate hardware/software to allow for instruction through online program delivery. A minimum GPA of 2.0 is required for transfer credits. The 120 credits offered by Aspen include 30 credits of general education courses, 87 credits of subject courses, a 3-credit senior capstone, and a 1 credit orientation (Becoming an Online Learner). NOTE: Students who have already earned an Associates Degree or have completed a minimum 60 credit hours of undergraduate studies including general education requirements can enroll in the Criminal Justice Degree Completion Program, therby reducing the number of courses required to earn their degree. Personal Attention from Instructors Students receive valuable, personalized instructor-time when they need it. Our faculty is remarkably qualified. All instructors hold advanced degrees and many have terminal degrees within their disciplines, and they are highly skilled in sharing information through distance learning channels. One other important quality we look for in our faculty: caring. That's why you'll find they're there when you need them, to answer questions, clarify concepts, or to just help work out a problem.

Please contact our admissions office if you have any questions about your ability to enroll in the Bachelor's Completion Program.

Course Listing

General Education Courses (30 credits)

Subject Courses (90 credits - selected from the following courses)

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Course Descriptions:

General Education Courses

Ethics in Law Enforcement
This course explores ethical standards and codes in criminal justice professions. The scope of the course covers the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics, American Bar Association' Standards of Professional Responsibility, the American Jail Association Code of Ethics, and the American Correctional Association Code of Ethics. It also explores roles of professional organizations and agencies, ethics and community relations, and civil liability in law enforcement and correctional environments. The students will study cases presented to illustrate ethical issues and derive solutions to ethical dilemmas using critical thinking.

Effective Professional Communications
This course provides an understanding of research and communications in a professional environment. It familiarizes students with the techniques, strategies, and forms of writing used in the professional world. Through library research and online information gathering, this course will increase students' knowledge of organizational writing and communications including case analysis, data interpretation, problem solving, and report writing. Students will also learn presentation techniques using Microsoft PowerPoint.

Technology in Criminal Justice
This course provides a framework of information about technology and computers and specifically how they are used by criminals and law enforcement agencies. It examines basic computer concepts and design, networking and information exchange, and then delves into more advanced and crime-specific technologies such as wiretaps, surveillance, and the use of technology in high-tech crimes, disaster response, and police protection. The study of technology is integrated into wider criminal justice themes: ethical and legal implications of technology; technology's place in the community based policing model; and, how technology impacts traditional criminal justice theories.

Human Relations Management
This course introduces the latest thinking about the subject of human relations and its impact on organizations. The overriding goal of the course is to answer the question: "Why do people act the way they do at work?" We will explore how companies can make the work and work lives of their employees more meaningful and enjoyable as a means to improving job performance. Students will form a general understanding of the nature of human relations, the thought leaders who contribute to this area, and practical ideas they can apply in their professional lives.

Introduction to Psychology
This course focuses on the many voices of psychology. To some, the science of psychology provides its students with a better understanding of others' behaviors. Others view psychology as a pathway to self-understanding. Others see the potential for a future career, and some are drawn to psychology by the opportunity for intellectual discovery that its study provides. The overall goal of this course is to provide a comprehensive overview to the subject of psychology.

Introduction to Sociology
This introductory course in sociology gives students the opportunity to use sociological imagination to master their social world. It examines aspects of the social environment that students might otherwise ignore, neglect, or take for granted. It looks beneath the surface of everyday life to help students understand and anticipate human behavior in a variety of environments.

Diversity and Culture
This course focuses on understanding and managing diversity. Our overall goal in this course is to assist students who will work in the field of criminal justice and as a result, we approach the subject of diversity and culture within the context of law enforcement. Clearly, diversity is an interdisciplinary field. Much of its theoretical framework originates in the social sciences. There is some disagreement among scholars on the definition of diversity; much less what materials should be included in a course about diversity. To meet this challenge we have selected a text for this course that gathers a wealth of information from the salient issues surrounding the topic of diversity in a law enforcement setting.

Managing Performance and Developing Teams
We believe the combination of performance and team management can produce dramatic improvement in organizational success. Too often performance management programs are more about classifying or categorizing employees rather than improving their performance. These approaches tend to be administrative in nature, rather than tools managers can use to improve performance. In today's organizations, teams - not the individual - have become the basic unit of performance management. As a result, team building and development has become critical. This course addresses two of the most important challenges managers face. The first half of the course is devoted to managing performance toward achieving the organization's strategic objectives. The second half of the course is focused on creating, developing, and leading high-performance teams.

English Composition I
The overriding goal of this course is to help students master the traditional five-paragraph essay and variations of this essay. It is designed to make a dramatic difference in the student's writing skills. The course embraces the four principles to effective writing: unity, support, coherence, and sentence skills. We will demonstrate how these four principles apply in the different patterns of essay development and in specialized types of writing.

English Composition II
Prerequisite: 160 - English Composition I
In the English Composition I. course we focused on grammar, sentence structure, and other aspects of the "mechanics" of English. In this course our emphasis is on creating arguments that persuade, convince, and inspire. The goal is to develop the writing skills that will enable students to develop powerful arguments that are more than just correct; they produce the results intended. We identify the fixed types of questions that an argument can address, helping students to build writing projects around the need to develop answers to significant questions concerning facts, definitions, causes, values, and actions. These questions form a logical progression - questions of fact and definition must be settled before questions of cause can be addressed, and so on - which means that they can serve as the basis of a sequence of assignments.

Business Statistics
This course is designed to provide students an overview of the field of statistics and its many applications. This course is applications oriented and written with the needs of the non-mathematician in mind. Although the course is applications-orientated, we have taken care to provide a sound methodological development and to use notation that is generally accepted for the topic being covered. Students will find that this course provides a good preparation for the study of more advanced material.

Managerial Economics
This course focuses on resource-allocation, strategic, and tactical decisions that are made by analysts, managers, and consultants. Managerial economic techniques seek to achieve the objectives of the organization in the most efficient manner, while considering both explicit and implicit constraints. Managerial economics is an applied branch of microeconomics. This course emphasizes real-world business applications - not just theories and concepts. We have organized the course around the twin themes of product-line rivalry and shareholder wealth management.

Major Courses

Introduction to Criminal Justice
This introductory course focuses directly on the crime picture in America and the three traditional elements of the criminal justice system: police, courts, and corrections. The course is divided into eight modules corresponding with the major issues of criminal justice including an introductory study of the definition of criminal justice, the crime picture in America, and the nature and purpose of criminal law and how the guilty are handled.

Introduction to Law Enforcement
This course studies the philosophy and history of law enforcement, presenting an overview of the crime problem and policy response issues. It provides in depth coverage of such topics as patrol, the police subculture, accountability, civil liability, extraordinary problems and practices, the rule of law investigations, organization and administration, and the future of policing. It also examines the qualification requirements and career opportunities in the law enforcement profession as well as a comparative perspective of policing in selected foreign countries.

Introduction to Justice Administration
The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to the justice administration system, encompassing police, courts, and corrections management. These three institutions must work together to achieve an effective overall system for the protection of public safety and order, the impartial and fair trial of those accused of crime, and the enlightened confinement and rehabilitation of those found guilty to minimize the rate of recidivism.

Introduction to Criminology
This course introduces the student to dynamic field of criminology that changes constantly with each release of major research studies, Supreme Court rulings, and governmental policy-not to mention the current events of everyday life. Criminologists spend their career trying to understand what drives people to commit crime. This introductory course will provide insights into the answers for many of these questions and will help students to think critically about law and justice. At the end of this course students should have developed a critical perspective toward the social and legal institutions entrusted with crime control.

Constitutional Law I
Effective law enforcement requires a basic understanding of the fundamental laws of the land. This course provides the overview of legal guidelines and protections enshrined in the US Constitution, from which all American criminal law is derived. Students will explore the theory of governmental authority that underpins the Constitution and the evolution of Constitutional rights as codified in the Constitutional amendments.

Constitutional Law II
This course builds on the foundations established in Constitutional Law I by taking the students through a series of legal case studies to gain an appreciation of how the legal system works in practice. The objective of these case studies is to provide the students with the insights that come from courtroom experience so that they are better prepared to find, collect, and handle evidence in a way that will facilitate criminal conviction.

Criminal Law
This course studies the historical background and foundations of American criminal law, including United States Constitutional requirements, Federal and State court organization and jurisdiction, criminal law basics, and rules of evidence and procedure. It covers in depth various categories of crimes and offenses including assault, homicide, sex offenses, theft, arson, forgery, narcotics, extortion, traffic offenses, crimes affecting the judicial process and organized crime.

Community Policing
This course focuses on an innovative and topical model of policing being adopted in many communities throughout the country. Community policing is not merely a means of better addressing community needs, but a philosophy that turns traditional policing on its head by empowering the community rather than dictating to the community. Community policing requires a new breed of police officers who not only serve as law enforcers, but also play the important roles of advisors, facilitators, and supporters of new community-based initiatives. As the community's conduit for positive change, community policing enlists citizens in the process of policing themselves.

Police Management
This course is designed to be an introduction to a wide variety of issues that confront today's modern police manager. The complex nature of policing in modern society mandate a thorough understanding of such issues as organizational culture, leadership styles, transactional analysis, problem identification and decision making, management by objectives, productivity, fiscal management, civil liability, accreditation, and ethics, to name but a few. This course will explore these issues.

Supervision of Police
This course explores what a modern police supervisor is and what that person should know and do, as well as when and how to do it. The course addresses the issue of role conflict that someone typically experiences when in the situation of having to meet the expectations of numerous sets of constituencies. This course will provide an understanding of the group behaviors and organizational dynamics necessary to understand the fundamentals of police administration.

Criminalistics and Forensic Investigation
This is an introductory course to criminalistics which explores the history and scope of forensic science. Criminalistics, or forensic science is the application of science to those criminal and civil laws that are enforced by police agencies in a criminal justice system. The scope of this course includes discovery at a crime scene, the most important location of evidence; physical evidence; analytical techniques for organic and inorganic materials; forensic toxicology; and firearms, ammunition, unique tool marks, and various impressions (e.g., shoe prints, fabric properties, and bloodstains).

Criminal Procedure
The focus of this course is on constitutional criminal procedure, specifically, U.S. Supreme Court decisions that interpret relevant provisions of the U.S. Constitution. This course examines criminal procedure as it relates to the law enforcement profession. Topics of Constitutional provisions applicable to arrest, search and seizure, interrogation, confessions, the trial and pretrial process, and immunity will are covered in detail.

Criminal Investigation I
This course presents the fundamentals of criminal investigation and their application to the more important felonies. It will also help the student to understand how detective work should be performed and to demystify the investigative process. Since criminal investigation must be conducted within the framework of our democratic system, those U.S. Supreme Court decisions that affect the investigative function are quoted extensively. In this course you will find that the ability to conduct any type of inquiry can be honed by studying the investigative process.

Criminal Investigation II
This course builds on the fundamentals of criminal investigation that were studied in Criminal Investigation I, and illustrates their application to some of the special issues presently plaguing law enforcement worldwide--such as terrorism and enterprise crime. In this course you will find that the ability to conduct any type of inquiry can be honed by studying the investigative process so Case Studies are illustrated.

Criminal Evidence
This course builds on the foundations laid in Criminal Law by exploring the principles and rules associated with the management of criminal evidence. Topics covered include the collection of evidence, how to handle evidence to prevent contamination, chain of custody, and preparation of evidence for presentation in the courtroom to attain criminal convictions. The rules of evidence are thoroughly discussed. The scope of the course encompasses physical evidence, witness testimony, polygraphs and technical evidence.

Kinesic Interviewing
Of all the topics taught in law enforcement academies and criminal justice training centers throughout the United States, one of the critical topics that always seem to little or no attention is the principles of interview and interrogation. For that reason, this course on Kinesic Interviewing equips the criminal justice student with a complete and practical set of procedures and techniques needed for interviewing and interrogation. It is vital to any case that investigators obtain essential information from victims, witnesses, informants, and confessions from suspects in such a way as to stand up to court scrutiny.

Juvenile Justice
This course provides an orientation to the area of juvenile delinquency, including the origins, causes, and course of development of delinquent behavior. The course outlines problems facing modern juveniles, and compares adult and juvenile justice systems. Topics include intervention, apprehension, referral, and preventive techniques. Juvenile problems addressed include chemical dependency, mental illness, and compulsive and habitual offenders. Finally the course outlines the problems inherent in the police handling of juveniles and the function of juvenile courts.

Corrections
This course provides an introduction to the corrections system. The growing population of persons in prisons constitutes a management challenge for all law enforcement communities and a potential source of governmental liability. This course will discuss the historical development of corrections, and examine the goals of criminal sentencing, the management of jails and prisons, the concept of alternative sentencing, guidelines on prisoner rights, and issues associated with parole and probation.

Homicide Investigation I
The purpose of this course is to equip the criminal justice student with a complete and practical set of methods for processing a homicide investigation. This course guides the student on what to do upon arriving on the scene of a violent and sudden death. Guidelines are provided on how to manage the scene and analyze the evidence to determine the likely cause of death and initiate the process of identifying the perpetrator. Techniques that were introduced in the major courses are applied to the specific purpose of homicide investigation to provide a sound foundation of effective police work.

Homicide Investigation II
This course is the second part of homicide investigation with CJ590 Homicide Investigation I as the prerequisite course. The purpose of this course is to equip the criminal justice student with a complete and practical set of procedures and techniques that are needed after the homicide scene has been processed. The student proceeds through the follow-on work necessary to prepare a solid case for presentation in court and the attainment of a homicide conviction.

Investigation of Organized Crime
This course explores the origins and development of organized crime in the United States. It described the types of criminal organizations looking at their goals, structures, and activities. The history of the major investigations into organized crime syndicates is discussed and the effective legal and law enforcement strategies are outlined to combat various types of criminal organizations.

Investigation of Terrorism
The Global War on Terror has posed new challenges for law enforcement organizations to contribute, along with military forces, to the homeland security of the United States. The purpose of this course is to offer the latest information on the technology, weapons (including weapons of mass destruction), transportation modes of terrorists, and profiles of terrorists themselves. Likely trends in 21st Century terrorism and the law enforcement response are also discussed.

Clandestine Laboratory Investigation
The investigation of clandestine labs is one of the most challenging of law enforcement. Traditional investigative techniques are used to develop information concerning the location of the lab and the identity of the operator. No other law enforcement activity relies on forensic experts as heavily as does the investigation of clandestine labs. This course explores the many people involved in identifying the clandestine lab, the proper collection and preservation of the physical evidence followed by the complete analysis of the evidentiary samples. It reveals how the information gathered is the cornerstone on which the forensic expert's opinion is based and if it is handled properly, the Court will have all the information it needs to make a fully informed decision.

Investigation of Sex Crimes
Recent statistics reveal that just slightly more than half of reported rape cases result in the arrest of a suspect. These statistics become even more troubling when realizing that less than half of all rapes believed to occur are reported to law enforcement officials. Concurrent with the increasing numbers of rape victims, there has been a burgeoning of research into myriad factors interwoven with sexual violence and its aftermath. This course will provide an understanding of the latest research and guidelines concerning the investigation of sex crimes.

Investigation of Arson
In terms of property values destroyed, arson is one of the most serious crimes in the United States today. Yet a surprisingly small percentage of arson crimes are ever solved, meaning that a large number of arsonists are never brought to justice. This course explores the nature of this crime, to include motives such as insurance fraud, methods and techniques of setting deliberate fires, the pathology of serial arsonists, and effective cooperation between police and fire departments along with other agencies.

Investigation of Computer Crime
The purpose of this course is to equip the criminal justice student with a complete and practical set of technological procedures and techniques for digital crime. This course will covers the challenging process of seeking scientific truth through objective and thorough analysis of digital evidence. As computer criminals grow more clever, digital forensics must keep pace in order to pierce the veil of deception that makes such crimes as identity theft more common. This course will prepare the criminal justice student to develop in this field as a forensic science discipline.

Traffic Accident Investigation
Each year in the United States traffic accidents result in thousands of men, women and children killed or maimed and millions of dollars in insurance payouts. Law enforcement professionals play a critical role in the investigation of traffic accidents to ensure that criminal culpability is properly assigned and liability claims are fairly processed. This course teaches the techniques of traffic accident investigation including determination of which motorists are at fault, the impact of environmental factors such as weather or illumination, and the impact of impairments such as alcohol or drugs.

The Investigation of White Collar Crime
The illegal appropriation of corporate funds every year costs share-holders and investors millions of dollars. This course provides an overview of the forensics of accounting, so that investigators can trace paper trails of white collar crimes to put together solid cases which lead to convictions. The course includes an overview of this criminal endeavor, common scams used by executive criminals, investigative techniques, and guidelines for the collection and presentation of evidence.

Security Systems, Procedures, and Developments
This course covers the various, diverse components which make up an effective security system, to include such areas as the relationship between private security and policing, technology, and structure of security operations. Security issues discussed range from security equipment and design theory to security management practice. In light of the industry changes since the 9-11-01 World Trade Center attacks, this course discusses the ramifications of Homeland Security in the United States as it relates to cargo and travel security, potential areas of attack and target hardening techniques, and the use of current technologies to combat new threats. Traditional physical and guard security is covered in addition to the advances in the electronic and computer security areas including biometric security, access control, CCTV surveillance advances.

Police Patrol
This course emphasizes a practical application of theory with the "how-to" of "real world" policing. It details the core functions of a police agency-covering patrol operations, goals, and strategies. It combines management theory with case study examples taken from small and medium sized police departments. The course includes coverage of patrol techniques, preparing for patrol and the role of the uniformed patrol officer in the criminal investigation process.

First Responders
This course provides and extensive examination of the responsibilities of the first responder. It covers all aspects of assessing the scene, assessing the patient, communication and documentation, dealing with various types of injuries, and special situations including hazardous materials, multiple casualty incidents and special rescue situations. The course goes beyond the national standards set by the U.S. government to fully cover the D.O.T. Curriculum, offers expanded coverage of common medical emergencies not covered in the D.O.T. curriculum, and includes a variety of "enrichment" materials.

Senior Capstone
The capstone project allows students to apply the knowledge and skills acquired in their courses to the work environment. The Senior Capstone emphasizes the student initiative in defining and investigating problems or projects focusing on integration and application of theory through research. This project is completely individualized; students are encouraged to select work-related projects that are of particular interest to them and that will result in professional growth and benefit the organization. Recommended final course for Business Administration majors.