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Criminal Justice Education and the Humanities - A New Era?

NCJ Number
105869
Journal
Educational and Psychological Research Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Dated: (1985) Pages: 149-164
Author(s)
J B Halsted
Date Published
1985
Length
16 pages
Annotation
If law enforcement efforts are to be effective, it will be necessary to produce sensitive, holistic officers who can produce practical results without losing sight of the moral consequences of their tasks. This will require that they receive a higher form of education than is presently offered.
Abstract
An examination of criminal justice students, the content of criminal justice programs, and the scholarship produced by criminal justice educators demonstrates that professional education in this field radically fails to incorporate any relationship with the disciplines of the humanities and is interdisciplinary only to the limited extent it integrates the law, social sciences, and vocational and technical training. It is argued that educators in the field must begin to integrate the insights and methods of philosophy, history, literature, cultural anthropology, religion, and arts into the traditional subject matter. It is suggested that criminal justice educators may not be competent to ensure this integration and that the educators themselves will require educating. 29 references. (Author abstract modified)