Curriculum: Certificate in Crime Analysis and Prevention

This course will introduce the statistical techniques used in the social sciences, including criminology and criminal justice, with emphasis placed on interpretation of results and computer applications. The course will include learning the logic of, and how to calculate, different statistical techniques.

This course is designed to teach the elementary skills and techniques of Geographic Information Science (GIS), with a focus on crime analysis, using ESRI ArcGIS 10.1, or similar software package. ArcGIS is a software platform that is used to apply geography to solving problems and making decisions. In addition to GIS techniques, we will be covering basic data preparation procedures, as well as a brief survey of various types of crime data and how to acquire such data. Topics to be covered will include querying, editing, designing, analyzing, and building map systems utilizing crime data. Analysis techniques will cover both attribute table and spatial data operations such as table relates and joins, spatial aggregation, and buffer analysis.

This course teaches students about the practice of crime analysis in law enforcement. Students will learn the terminology, principles, and techniques crime analysts use in everyday practice. A major component of this class is learning how to perform advanced analytical techniques employed by crime analysts using software programs such as ArcGIS 10.3, Excel 2013, and CrimeStat IV, or other versions as appropriate.

This course is designed to provide an exploration of the various approaches to reducing crime as well as the theories that inform those approaches. We will focus most fully on situational approaches to crime prevention, though we will also explore crime prevention through social development, community-based crime prevention. We will also examine how policing intersects with these various approaches to crime prevention.

This is an introductory course on policing for graduate students. The course explores the origins of policing, especially the British antecedents of American police, and explanations for the development and structure of contemporary police. The current state of policing in America is examined, as are continuing and emerging issues in policing and law enforcement. The future of American policing is considered and assessed.

This course covers the fundamental theories of environmental criminology (AKA Crime Science) – rational choice perspectives, advanced routine activity theory, crime pattern theory, situational crime prevention, and problem-oriented policing – and shows how these theories can be used to diagnose the causes of specific crime problems, develop and implement solutions to these problems, and evaluate the effectiveness of solutions. It also examines criminal adaptation to prevention and how this can be measured and countered.

This course covers research and evaluation into what types of interventions used by the police have an effect on crime, disorder, and fear of crime. It examines theories of police effectiveness, methods for determining effectiveness, and the empirical results of effectiveness studies.