The State of Diversity in Criminal Justice Higher Education: An Analysis of Curricula in Criminal Justice Bachelor’s Degree Programs

Abstract

The study examines diversity-themed course offerings in criminal justice and criminology (CJC) bachelor’s degree programs in the United States in 2020–21. Using a sample of 359 CJC programs, we document the presence of diversity-themed courses and degree requirements using data collected from university websites. We explore patterns of diversity-themed courses by department and institutional characteristics and assess the current state of diversity curricula in the discipline of criminal justice and criminology. Results of our analysis reveal that a substantial majority (75 percent) of CJC programs possessed at least one diversity-themed course while only 12 percent required students to complete a diversity-themed course in the major. We consider what these and related findings mean for the discipline in light of previous research and discuss the importance of developing student competencies in racial, gender, and other dimensions of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the contemporary context of American criminal justice.

Keywords:

• Curriculum
• diversity
• equity
• bachelor’s degree
• undergraduate
• criminal justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 For example, my university’s criminal justice program established an ad hoc anti-racism committee to work on the department’s response to the murder of George Floyd and others in 2020. In the course of data collection for the study, we also observed public anti-racism and/or diversity statements on several CJC program webpages about police brutality and racial injustice. It is also worth noting that the Executive Board of American Society of Criminology adopted a statement on the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery in June 2020.

2 Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are associated with practice and policy goals consistent with the absence of discrimination by institutional actors. Anti-racism or racial justice moves beyond DEI to focus on systemic practices and patterns that produce racial and other forms of inequality and commits to disrupting both the institutional and individual values and behaviors that underlie racism (Paradies, 2016). DEI-themed curricula are criticized for the tendency to ignore systematic inequalities. For practitioners and educators committed to anti-racism, DEI alone is insufficient to achieve racial justice goals.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kirk Miller

Kirk Miller is Associate Professor of Sociology at East Carolina University. His research interests and publications are concerned with inequalities in justice. He has published articles in the Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, Feminist Criminology, Crime and Delinquency, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and Journal of Criminal Justice, among others.

Elizabeth Alves

Elizabeth Alves is a graduate student in Sociology at East Carolina University. Her interests are in teaching sociology and criminal justice.