Faculty demographics in criminology and criminal justice: a wider view

Abstract

Large-scale analyses of the demographics of postsecondary students and faculty in the United States have found that the student population has become quite diverse while faculty have not made the same strides. Unfortunately, knowledge about the demographic diversity of faculty that are specific to criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) has been based on surveys of CCJ organizations with general memberships and/or the faculty in a small sample of Ph.D. granting institutions. This study attempts to fill this void through a wide-scale analysis of the demographics of faculty in 726 universities and colleges in the United States that offer CCJ majors. Utilizing photographs of faculty along with all other existing information at our disposal, we found CCJ faculty to be slightly more diverse than what has been found in other recent analyses, although still well below the diversity statistics that are known about CCJ students.

Keywords:

• Criminal justice
• criminology
• faculty
• demographics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Not shown in Table 1 are 1,153 professors that had a primary focus outside of CCJ, including 702 sociology professors. Although these professors may assist with some of the CCJ teaching duties, we excluded them from our analysis because it was apparent that their primary duties were not focused on CCJ.

2 Although the term Hispanic is more specifically an ethnicity rather than a “race”, both terms are often used interchangeably. Therefore, in our current study sample, we will use the term “race” to encompass both terms of “race” and “ethnicity.” This methodological decision is supported by Parker et al. (2015), which found that most Hispanic adults believe their Hispanic identity is essential to their racial and ethnic self-perception.

3 We originally included a category for Indian/South Asian. However, since we identified only a tiny percentage (less than a percent) of faculty that fell into the Indian/South Asian category, it was deleted and those faculty were added to the non-White male and non-White female categories.

4 When a full-time professor’s photograph was missing from a webpage or his or her race or gender could not be identified from their departmental photograph, we searched web pages such as LinkedIn, research gate, and other professional sites for photographs, descriptive text about the faculty member, and any other additional information that could help us make a classification about the faculty members’ demographics.

5 MSIs were identified via Rutgers Graduate School of Education (2022) list of MSIs. For extended analysis of the impact of MSIs and specific types of MSIs (Historically Black, Hispanic Serving, etc.) on CCJ faculty demographics, please see supplementary Table 4s in Appendix B at our online Appendix web page.

6 Not included in this manuscript are exploratory multivariate analyses that were undertaken in an attempt to explain the percentage of faculty that were White as well as the percentage faculty that were female across the 726 departments in our analysis. These analyses can be viewed in supplementary tables 6sa and 6sb in Appendix C at our online Appendix web page.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brion Sever

Brion Sever is a criminologist who received his Ph.D. from Florida State University in 1999. He is currently an Associate Professor and a graduate program coordinator within the Justice Studies Department at Florida Gulf Coast University. Dr. Sever is co-author of the book Punishment and Crime: The Limits of Punitive Policy and has also published his research in over a dozen journals, including Criminology, Police Quarterly, and the Journal of Criminal Justice Education.

Sara Rolland

Sara Rolland is a forensic studies master’s candidate with a concentration in human identity and trauma analysis at Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU). Mrs. Rolland also received her bachelor’s degrees at FGCU in criminal justice and forensic studies with research interests in psychology and anthropology.

Christian Fabrizio

Christian Fabrizio is a postgraduate student at Florida Gulf Coast University who specializes in the study of human identity and the analysis of skeletal trauma. His research interests include forensic pathology, human osteology, and the rights of the Black and queer communities.