NCJ Number
73816
Journal
Police Studies Volume: 3 Issue: 3 Dated: (Fall 1980) Pages: 24-31
Date Published
1980
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This critique of the recent report entitled The Quality of Police Education praises the report's support for the liberal arts approach to criminal justice and criticizes its bias against criminal justice as an academic field.
Abstract
The report was prepared by the National Advisory Commission on Higher Education for Police Officers. The Commission was created by the Police Foundation. This report represents the first major attempt to analyze the results of the explosion of police and criminal justice educational programs created by the social upheavals of the 1960 and the resulting sponsorship of law enforcement education by the Federal Government. The report correctly rejects the paraprofessional, purely informative approach to criminal justice education. This approach focuses on vocational training and duplicates the efforts of most police academies. The report also rightly advocates using courses from traditional liberal arts disciplines to define and develop programs and majors in criminal justice and to develop the mind as a probing but rigorous instrument of thought and expression. The Commission is wrong, however, to believe that for both inservice and preservice students, majors in criminal justice or police studies are, at best, second best to traditional liberal arts majors and programs. The definition of criminal justice programs is broad enough to fuse the learning of cognitive skills and values with examination of the major issues in policing; thus they should be upgraded rather than rejected. A review of some of the report's controversial recommendations is included. Footnotes are also provided.