The Criminal Justice A.S. program prepares students to transfer to a four-year college or university to major in criminal justice and related social science disciplines. Building on a solid foundation of required courses focusing on law, criminology, criminal justice and private security, the curriculum allows students to take elective coursework in such areas as policing, juvenile justice, corrections and security to suit their own professional interests. In addition, students take a variety of courses in such areas as forensic science, math and social science. 

The goals of this program are to:

•    provide students with philosophical and historical background of the criminal justice system as well as a working knowledge of the penal and criminal procedure law;

•    introduce students to the theories of crime, crime causation, crime prevention, as well as a general understanding of criminal justice ethics and resolution to those issues; and 

•    provide students with a general understanding of the adult correctional system, as well as the juvenile justice system.

Successful graduates from this program will be able to:

•    express knowledge of the philosophical and historical background of the CJ system and review penal and criminal procedural law; 

•    analyze theories and theory application, and identify common CJ ethical issues as well as resolutions to those issues; and 

•    identify the main parts and functions of the adult and juvenile corrections system.

•    enter filing deadlines, court appearances, and other legal deadlines into a computerized legal calendaring system and also maintain a separate manual system for backup; explain how to set up and maintain a lawyer trust banking account;

•    given a fact pattern, identify the intentional torts or negligent torts contained in the fact pattern and identify which fact satisfies which essential element of the tort(s);

•    given a fact pattern, identify and evaluate these facts to see if the essential elements to form a valid contract are present and to explain if the contract(s) comply with legal rules such as the Statute of Frauds;

•    given an extensive fact pattern and list of evidence, draft a complaint, answer, and appropriate motions;

•    categorize evidence, describe the proper discovery methods and draft simple discovery pleadings and responses;

•    given a detailed fact pattern, identify the correct estate in land to convey the proper form of ownership, review a land survey, verify the legal description and select proper clauses for the contact;

•    given a legal issue (identified by the supervising attorney), conduct legal research, (computerized or manual) using the appropriate resources to locate cases, statutes and regulations pertinent to the issue, and write a legal memorandum summarizing the research conducted and explaining the status of the law as it relates to the identified issue;

•    identify the legal issues pertaining to marriage, annulment, divorce, property division, support and child custody; and retrieve the proper forms from the courts web site; and 

•    draft a simple will and simple trust documents from information given in a fact pattern, list the contents of the probate estate and retrieve the proper forms for beginning the probate process.