Department of Crime and Justice Studies

Faculty and Fields of Interest

Viviane Saleh-Hanna (Department Chairperson) (professor) history of criminology and criminal legal systems; black feminist hauntology; carceral tourism studies; anti-colonial cortical mapping; slavery in Canada and the United States; West African systems of imprisonment and policing; Afrofuturism.

Tammi Arford (associate professor) punishment and social control; knowledge, power and resistance; carceral tourism; aesthetics; media and popular culture.

Aneesa Baboolal (assistant professor)

Susan Krumholz (professor emeritus) crime and justice; theories of crime, law and society; domestic violence; women’s studies.

Eric Larson (associate professor) hemispheric American Studies; comparative race and ethnicity; neoliberalism; labor; transnational social movements; comparative political culture.

Vanessa Lovelace (assistant professor)

Toniqua Mikell (assistant professor)

Heather Turcotte (associate professor) African, African American and Africana studies; American and critical ethnic studies; community herbalism and environmental studies; critical legal studies; geopolitics and international studies; feminist studies; transnational social justice and abolitionism; transdisciplinary methods.

Tryon Woods (associate professor) critical race; gender, and sex studies; African diaspora; punishment and policing; political and symbolic economies of structural violence and globalization.

Erin Katie Krafft (assistant professor) Transnational feminist and resistance movements; culture and society under socialism, post-socialism, and Communism; literatures of survival and resistance; the politicization of motherhood, family, and private life; social theories of power and control.

Brian Broadrose (assistant professor). Race and ethnicity, racism, Indigenous archaeology, NAGPRA and Repatriation, Museum Studies, the culture of anthropology, critical theory, feminist theory, punk rock, Situationist perspectives, social movements, transformative social justice.

Part Time Lecturers

Jean Robertson

Department of Crime and Justice Studies Mission

The department of Crime and Justice Studies brings together the academic fields of criminology, criminal justice and justice studies while bridging the social sciences, humanities and sciences. We offer a multi-disciplinary program that specializes in the study of the criminal justice system’s policies and procedures to analyze the nature of structural, institutional, and transnational violence while providing students with the critical histories and skills they need to transform unjust conditions and improve society and their communities.

CJS provides teachings and research on the context, history, media, politics, policy, powers and responsibilities of the criminal justice system and the multiple agencies that engage with its work throughout society. The multi-disciplinary nature of the CJS program engages students with various alternative models of justice including restorative and transformative justice, conflict resolution and mediation, and abolitionism. Starting in our classrooms, students learn cross-agency skills and teachings that allow them to work within and across various ideologies and applications of criminal justice, law enforcement, and the legal system. Our students have graduated to work in the fields of law enforcement, courts, corrections, public administration, social services, youth services, non-profits agencies, corporate settings and community organizations.

Admission into the Major

Students seeking admission to Crime and Justice Studies must have a minimum overall GPA of 2.0.

Students interested in majoring in Crime and Justice Studies must schedule an interview with the Chair of the Crime and Justice Studies Program for permission to enter the program, to discuss the program requirements and to arrange for a CJS faculty advisor.

Minimum Requirements for Graduation:

To successfully complete the program for graduation, all students must:

Maintain a minimum of a 2.75 GPA in the major
Maintain a minimum of a 2.0 GPA overall
Meet the CJS major requirements listed below
Complete 30 credits at 300/400 level (including all courses in the major except Experiential Learning)
Complete a minimum of 120 credits with at least 45 at UMass Dartmouth
Complete the University Studies requirements
Complete the distribution requirements of the College of Arts and Sciences
All courses counting for the major must be completed with a C- or higher
Complete all required CJS core courses, 4 CJS electives within the Crime and Justice Studies department.

Student Learning Goals

Discipline-specific:

Study the working dynamics of the Criminal Justice System and how it crosses over with other governmental agencies and various communities;
Study systems of justice, inequality and the dynamics of local and global distributions of power;
Study the constructed and institutionalized natures of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and culture;
Study basic theoretical arguments in criminology, criminal justice, justice studies and related fields;
Develop a critical understanding of social scientific approaches to research, sound research requirements, mixed method research designs; and
Develop abilities to apply knowledge from discipline-specific research and theory to issues in their lives, communities and work environments.

General skills:

Present organized, coherent arguments through developed public speaking and academic writing skills
Understand and critically evaluate social-scientific work
Ability to assemble relevant published background research, critically evaluate the research, and integrate it into an argument.