Cultural Preparation of Criminology and Subordinate Personnel in Criminal Justice Administration

• NCJ Number: 73356
• Journal: Deviance et societe Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Dated: (March 1980) Pages: 53-60
• Author(s): G Houchon
• Date Published: 1980
• Length: 8 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: French
• Country: Switzerland

Annotation

Support staff in criminal justice administration, especially custodial personnel, are short-changed by the training and preparation they receive before entering employment as correctional and police officers in Belguim.

Abstract

The educational and professional objectives for persons seeking employment as criminal justice support personnel (police officers, custodial personnel) are formulated and expressed by a small group of salaried professionals. Those receiving the training and reaching for the objectives should themselves become more involved in developing such training and more interested in improving their situations. Criminology has grown in the scientific knowledge of crime causes and social problems that contribute to deviance as well as in the development of professions that deal with crime phenomena. As the school of thought has grown, so has the number of schools providing training in criminological areas. Consequently, and fortunately, criminology has lost some of its scholarly elitism without losing its scientific rigor. Preferably, before support personnel enter the system, they should receive criminological training either through specialized university curricula or through more developed programs in the secondary schools. More thorough career preparation would help to counteract the image of custodial guards and police officers as insensitive brutes incapable of learning the finer points of criminology, and would help to reinsert a sense of respect for these very valuable jobs. If support personnel continue to come directly out of neighborhoods or situations that are similar to those from which most common criminals also emerge and if these personnel are not given special attention and training, it will continue to be difficult to distinguish one group of persons (criminals) from the other (subordinate criminal justice personnel). Thirteen references are provided.