Becoming a Police Officer: Fields of Study (page 6)

If you have decided that you will need a four-or two-year degree before or during your pursuit of a police officer career, the next step would be to consider what you will study. Many colleges and universities across the country have Criminal Justice degree programs. However, you don't necessarily need to major in one of these programs.

There are many in the field who believe that a well-rounded college education, one that includes courses in accounting, psychology, foreign languages, and courses that will improve your communication and computer skills, makes for the best candidate. You can concentrate your study on any one of these areas and enhance the skills needed for your future career. The Berkeley, CA police department, for example, requires 60 college credits, and specifies that they be in Administration of Justice, Criminology, Police Science, Public Administration, Psychology, Sociology, and/or English.

Just the Facts

College students are expected at some point in their education, generally in the second or third year, to declare what is called a major. This can be defined simply as what you are specializing in and the subject matter you will study in your advanced courses.

All colleges require that a student take a certain number of what are called general education courses. These may be similar to subjects you took in high school such as English, math, government, and history. Others, the liberal arts and humanities, will introduce you to fields such as economics, psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, and possibly a foreign language. Within the past decade, a number of colleges have added courses on ethics and on cultural diversity to provide an introduction to living in a diverse society.

If you do decide to get a bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice, you will probably need 33 credits in your major, which might look like this:

Criminal Justice 101	Introduction to Criminal Justice	3 credits
Law 203	Constitutional Law	3 credits
Sociology 203	Criminology	3 credits
Corrections 201	The Law and Institutional Treatment	3 credits
Law 206	The American Judiciary	3 credits
Police Science 201	Police Organization and Administration	3 credits
Statistics 250	Principles and Methods of Statistics	3 credits
Literature 327	Crime and Punishment in Literature	3 credits
Philosophy 321	Police Ethics	3 credits
Police Science 245	Seminar in Community Policing	3 credits
Police Science 401	Seminar in Police Problems	3 credits

For an associate (two-year) degree, majoring in Criminal Justice, you could take courses such as:

CRIJ 1310	Fundamentals of Criminal Law	3 credits
CRIJ 1301	Introduction to Criminal Justice	3 credits
CRIJ 1306	Courts and Criminal Procedure	3 credits
CRIJ 1307	Crime in America	3 credits
CJCR 1307	Correctional Systems and Practices	3 credits
CJSA 2300	Legal Aspects of Law Enforcement	3 credits

For an associate (two-year) degree, majoring in Criminology, your core course work could include:

CRIM 150	Introduction to the Criminal Justice System	3 credits
CRIM 200	Criminology	3 credits
CRIM 201	Institutional and Commercial Security	3 credits
CRIM 210	Introduction to Corrections	3 credits
CRIM 220	Introduction to Law Enforcement	3 credits
CRIM 280	The Law of Criminal Justice	3 credits
CRIM 285	Introduction to Criminalistics	3 credits
CRIM 298	Practicum in Criminal Justice	3 credits

For all degrees, you will probably be required to take the remainder of your credits in courses such as sociology, math, accounting, computers, writing/composition, psychology, government, and philosophy.

Police Studies

A major in what was once called police science but is now more likely to be called police studies is most often designed for students who want to pursue law enforcement careers or for in-service students. Because it is a popular major among in-service students, if you select this major it is very likely that you will interact in the classroom with a large number of experienced officers.

This can be positive and negative. The positive aspects are that you are immersed in the real world of policing through the questions and comments of your classmates. You may learn of job opportunities firsthand from them, and you will most likely receive encouragement in your career choice. A negative aspect is that hearing these experienced officers complain about department policies may dampen your enthusiasm for entering the field. Another negative, particularly if the professor has been a law enforcement professional, may be that you will feel left out of discussions and wonder what the others all know that you are missing. There is no reason, though, to be intimidated by this. The course content is not based only on current-day policing. A police studies major should include courses in police history and in organizational theories and management. Course work will likely also investigate other areas of the criminal justice system, particularly considering how they interact with or are influenced by the police. Since academic and practical applications often differ, you may learn that your in-service classmates bring a narrower perspective to their efforts than you do.

Criminal Justice

Majoring in criminal justice generally will provide you with the chance to look in greater detail than in police studies at the other areas of the criminal justice system. Generally these include local, state, and federal courts; local, state, or federal corrections; and the fields of probation and parole. Placing the police in this broader context will also involve more courses in government and political science.

Because this major is more general than police studies, it may peak your interest to consider careers in the field that you had not previously thought about. Since some of the other criminal justice professions you will learn about require a four-year college degree, you might decide that your education has opened to you areas that at one time seemed beyond your reach. Many of those in the academic community consider the broader base of the criminal justice degree as a stronger preparation for those planning to attend graduate school, perhaps law school or a school of public administration. While this is not a universally accepted viewpoint, there is a strong possibility that a criminal justice program will expose you to at least one social science research methods course, as well as other specialized areas that might not be included in required police studies courses.

Criminal Justice Administration and Planning

Generally not available in two-year colleges, a major in criminal justice administration and planning may be a wise selection for two types of applicants. If you are interested in moving up in rank or working in an administrative position, this degree will help you to see how criminal justice agencies operate on a day-to-day basis. It will provide you with a deeper knowledge of organizational and management theories, as well as an understanding of the planning process.

This major might also be attractive to you if you are interested in a law enforcement career that may not directly involve policing. Many candidates want to be a part of the policing community but are unwilling or unable to make the commitment to attend a police academy and then to work on patrol or on various hours or days of the week. Possibly you already know that a physical condition will make it difficult for you to successfully complete a police department's selection process but you still want to work within law enforcement. Positions in planning, human resources, finance, and a number of areas are filled by civilians in many police and criminal justice agencies. Bringing knowledge of these fields may help you compete for these jobs.

The degree, as its name implies, focuses on planning, policy analysis and implementation, and management theories and practices applied to the criminal justice system. Because it focuses on management issues, this major will also introduce you to theories of leadership and to internal and external ethical issues faced by criminal justice agencies and their employees.

Public Administration

Like the major in criminal justice administration and planning, a major in public administration provides an opportunity to look beyond criminal justice. In this major, course work may focus on decision making and management in all types of public agencies. You will learn how public administration and public management developed and how it differs from private sector management.

It is similar to a major in business administration but focuses on the public sector. The obvious difference between the public and private sectors involves the need to show a profit. But other areas of difference involve the greater likelihood that the public sector will have a civil service-or union-protected workforce and that salaries are determined through collective bargaining. External political issues may play a different role than in private industry administration. Among the topics commonly covered in this major are economic issues and financial and budgetary management, theories of organization and management, and human resource management processes.

Security (or Protection) Management

Security (or protection) management is, like police studies, a degree program that was initially aimed at working professionals who sought a college degree while also preparing for promotional opportunities at their place of employment. Today many students in this major are in-service personnel. Many are mid-or high-ranking officers who are preparing themselves for careers as managers, consultants, or business owners in the private security sector. Until quite recently, the career path into senior level positions in private security was to have worked as a police officer. This is becoming less true today. As the private security industry has matured and moved beyond supervision of uniformed guards, more managers are coming to the field with educational backgrounds in security issues or with professional backgrounds reflecting technical skills.

For this reason, this major is less directly related to policing than many of the others described. But it is a good choice for those who are not sure that the public sector is where they want to work. Generally, requirements for security guards in most parts of the country are low, but that is not true for investigative or administrative positions in private security firms. Many of these, especially the security departments of large corporations, require applicants to have a four-year college degree.

Many of those hoping to be police officers often have a tendency to dismiss private security as a career option. The field, though, is far more complex and more professional than many in policing realize. It is also one of the fastest growing employment areas in the country. In addition to entry level security officers, the numbers of private investigators, property protection personnel, threat analysis specialists, and those with the knowledge to integrate surveillance and computer systems have increased substantially in the past decades.

After September 11, 2001, many companies expanded their security networks and a large number of public agencies realized the need for specialized personnel other than routine, uniformed security officers. One of the major consumers of private security services is the public sector. Through contracting out for services, local, state, and the federal government rely on private security firms for such activities as testing products, protecting embassies around the world, undertaking physical threat and vulnerability analyses, and securing computer networks against fraud and virus attacks. Since the private security industry is even more fractured than policing and because much of it is only minimally regulated, it is difficult to estimate the size of the industry. Those who have tried, though, estimate that there are about 60,000 private security firms that together employ at least three times more private security practitioners than there are public police. Estimates are that as much as $90 billion is spent annually on private security throughout the United States.

If you are entrepreneurial and have thoughts of someday working in the private sector, this major might be of interest to you. If you select this field you will learn the history and current practices of the security industry, review case studies of successful security programs and analyze security vulnerabilities, and consider programs to reduce losses in public institutions and private corporations.