[ Golden Gater Online - December 16, 1997 ]
Leslie Fulbright Cruz
Staff writer
SF State's criminal justice program, long known for rejecting the idea of churning out future cops, is on its way to becoming an official major as soon as the spring semester.
The criminal justice major has completed the first cycle in the long bureaucratic process and should be approved sometime this spring, joining all other California State University campuses, which already offer the major, according to Program Director John Curtin.
The new major will continue to focus on liberal arts instead of being a "cop shop" like many other programs across the country. Curtin said he is not interested in pumping out cops or lawyers but rather focusing on education.
The major "has been designed for students who want their primary scholarly emphasis placed upon a critical appraisal of law enforcement, the courts and jails, and prisons," according to the program curricula submitted for university approval.
"We don't need to train police. They are already very well trained and because of this, they are poorly educated," Curtin said. "Training is agenda-driven and education is not."
The major, based on the criminal justice program that has been on campus for 10 years, exposes students to alternate points of view and three different perspectives of criminal justice. These three perspectives are crime control, due process by teaching cops to have respect for the courts and how people are treated differently in the criminal justice system based on their class.
Although Curtin believes that in the criminal justice system "the rich get richer, the poor get prison," he says the program is taught from non-Marxist and non-conspiratorial theories. With regard to race, Curtin said criminal justice and race and racism are linked inexplicably.
Some of the proposed classes in the curricula include Comparative Criminal Justice Systems, Literature in Criminal Justice and classes that emphasize economic, social and racial issues in the law. Most of the instructors have backgrounds in law enforcement, but their roles vary. Some of the instructors are former police officers, some serve as attorneys and still others are alternative incarceration advocates.
Even though other CSU schools already have a criminal justice major, Curtin said he "resisted for 10 years on the grounds that he wanted a liberal arts curriculum rather than a cop shop training program." But there was also a great demand from students for the new major and its philosophy.
In its 10 years at SF State, the program has gained a loyal following by students, who can often be found hanging out in the department offices and using the library, which is filled with books on subjects from the effect of criminal justice on the underclass to preparing for the LSATs.
Curtin's main emphasis is to educate his students in a cross-disciplinary program, but many of his graduates go on to law schools after finishing the criminal justice program. Even though it hasn't been a major, students have taken a number of criminal justice classes and have received a major in behavioral sciences with a concentration in criminal justice.
Amanda Janes will be one of the first to graduate with a criminal justice major. She is happy with SF State's program because it allows her to look critically at how the system works.
After being exposed to this thought model, she sees "that the system is grinding down on the underclass, and prisons are a mechanism to warehouse these people."
Other students caught between the behavioral sciences major and a full criminal justice major will be dealt with "one at a time," Curtin said.
[ Golden Gater - December 16, 1997 ]