The University of Maryland's new Professional Masters of Arts in Criminal Justice is a 30 credit degree program designed to train both mid-career and pre-career students for management analysis and research in criminal justice agency settings. The mission of this program is to improve public safety by increasing the capacity of criminal justice personnel to identify and solve problems. The specific objectives of the program are for students to learn the following specific skills: 

• Analyzing agency data to identify high priority crime prevention objectives;
• Reviewing criminological literature to identify possible ways to reduce crime: planning and implementing innovative solutions to crime problems, and
• Evaluating both the implementation and impact of agency efforts to reduce crime.

Why is This Important?

The potential for more effective crime prevention through the scientific criminology remains largely untapped. The new Professional MA in Criminal Justice reflects increasing demands for graduate-level instruction bridging the gap between science and policy, research and implementation. Police officers and managers, correctional agents and supervisors, private security managers, and other professionals who already hold a baccalaureate degree can all apply social science tools more rigorously to public safety problem-solving.

All across the nation, at federal, state and local levels of government, criminal justice professionals are facing new demands for analytic rigor in crime analysis and crime prevention planning. Computerized crime analysis has been widely cited as the cutting edge of criminal justice practice. Yet few professionals in the field are adequately prepared to do such work. Many who do perform it are unfamiliar with basic principles of social science and statistical analysis, and make frequent analytic errors that may ultimately be harmful to public safety. Others lack the software and programming skills needed to analyze mainframe data in public safety environments.

Over the past decade, criminal justice agencies have increased their budget allocations for criminal justice analysis. Top managers increasingly depend upon these analysts to plan – and defend – these strategies of resource allocation. These developments have created great demand for more people who can analyze and interpret complex crime data.

What Will I Learn?

Students who complete the program will learn both content and methods of criminal justice analysis. They will learn the current state of the field through the required courses in criminal justice, criminology, and the three concentrations areas of policing, courts, and corrections. Students will also learn how to keep learning in their professional lives as the field evolves through new research and policy innovations. Courses on statistics, research methods and data analysis will help them interpret and conduct applied research. Students will learn how to think more systematically about policy issues, the measurement of policy effects, and planned change. Finally, they will learn how to undertake a policy analysis project from start to finish, learning by doing under the guidance of a faculty member in the final capstone course of the program.

The general plan of study for the Professional M.A. student is as follows:

• CCJS 600 (Criminal Justice), CCJS 604 (Policy Analysis Project), CCJS 605 (Program Evaluation), CCJS 611 (Statistical Tools for Criminal Justice), CCJS 651 (Criminology), and CCJS 720 (Criminal Justice System Planning) are required courses that must be passed with a grade of "B" or better.
• Four Elective Courses which may include CCJS 601 (Policing), CCJS 602 (Courts and Sentencing), CCJS 603 (Corrections), CCJS 612 (Applied Data Analysis), CCJS 660 (Gender and Crime), CCJS 670 (Race and Crime), and CCJS 680 (Drugs and Crime) or other courses as deemed relevant by the student's advisor.
• A scholarly paper in lieu of a thesis.
  • The candidate must present one paper as evidence of scholarly writing ability in the area of criminology or criminal justice.
• The student has a choice of specializing in one of three areas: policing, courts, or corrections.

Why the University of Maryland?

The University of Maryland's Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice is a national and international leader in teaching and research on these important issues. In recent years Maryland's Criminology faculty have been asked to assist the U.S. Congress, the FBI, the Justice Department and other Federal agencies, many foreign governments, as well as state  and local agencies. All of these requests reflect the growing need for a clearer understanding of the cause-and-effect   relationships between crime reduction programs and the level of crime. It also reflects growing demand for the application of the scientific method to the design and evaluation of criminal justice programs, an area in which Maryland is the international leader.

Contact: crimgrad@deans.umd.edu , for more information.