About Us

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Staff Writers Contributing Writer
Updated August 24, 2021

CriminalJusticeDegreeSchools.com is an advertising-supported site. Featured or trusted partner programs and all school search, finder, or match results are for schools that compensate us. This compensation does not influence our school rankings, resource guides, or other editorially-independent information published on this site.

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At CriminalJusticeDegreeSchools.com (CJDS), we make it our mission to help aspiring criminal justice (CJ) students and professionals actualize their dreams of serving and protecting their communities.

CJDS educates our users on the many fields and career paths across the criminal justice system, which includes law enforcement, corrections, and the court system. We empower our users to set and pursue career goals by providing degree, program, and school information drawn from objective, data-driven sources. By identifying schools with positive student outcomes and high return on investment (ROI), we use our expertise to help safeguard students' educational investments.

Our mission is to align potential students' desire to serve their community with the right educational path towards an impactful career in criminal justice.

The sections below explain in detail the resources that we provide, how we source our information, and our emphasis on education as a vehicle for career advancement and economic mobility. Read further for guidance, encouragement, and clarity on how to engineer a lucrative, exciting, and meaningful future in criminal justice.

What We Do

This site provides academic and career resources for aspiring and current criminal justice students and professionals. Our primary offerings include degree guides, program descriptions and rankings, career guides, and criminal justice student and professional resources.

We discuss the requirements, content, and potential benefits of various criminal justice degrees. By compiling, analyzing, and condensing accurate data on criminal justice schools and career paths, we empower our users to advance their careers through education.

We help prospective students navigate the field by introducing them to the many degree types and subjects available, including degrees in computer forensics, corrections, sociology, and legal studies. In our degree guides, students can find overviews of potential certificate programs and associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs.

Our coverage includes programs at all levels in the CJ field, such as cybersecurity, security management, and forensic psychology. Our degree overviews help students make educational and career choices by discussing the curricula, salary and job outlook, and job descriptions associated with each degree.

We also offer program rankings, which enable prospective students to efficiently compare and select from lists of top academic programs in their field of choice. Our rankings sort programs by degree, location, and price, and summarize key features of each program. We use data from the nation's most reliable education research agencies to inform our program summaries, rankings, and degree guides.

On our criminal justice careers overview, you can find lists of potential jobs in the field, along with salary data, requisite education, and employment data by state. These tables enable students to quickly survey the options available and to find convenient links to pages discussing each career in depth. Specific career pages cover job duties, requirements, and salary and job outlook.

In addition to specific career paths, we discuss career and salary outlook for the field in general. We provide illuminating interviews from real criminal justice professionals in various fields. Our four career centers provide additional resources for users interested in corrections, forensics, homeland security, and policing.

How We Work

By combining reputable data with perspectives from industry experts, we provide a user-friendly hub of reliable information for aspiring and current CJ students and professionals seeking career transition or advancement opportunities.

The specialized publishing team at CJDS grounds our rankings and content in current, accurate data sourced from unbiased economic and education research agencies. We utilize machine learning to analyze large sets of information about hundreds of criminal justice schools, allowing us to provide well-founded conclusions based on representative data sets. Our transparent rankings methodology guarantees impartial results that do not favor our sponsors.

We make it our job to sort and highlight top academic programs, helping to ensure that our users choose from schools that meet rigorous accreditation and performance standards. Drawing on reputable data sources such as the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), we carefully rank programs based on reliable data that considers institutional achievement, program performance, and school resources.

Established in 1980 to improve educational access and quality in the United States, ED performs many functions, including the collection and dissemination of research on American schools. NCES, ED's primary research center, serves students and their families by ensuring the transparency, accuracy, and accessibility of educational data.

To compile its career guides and centers, CJDS uses objective and comprehensive data and analysis from economic research entities such as PayScale and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). PayScale features useful career descriptions, salary data based on experience level, and information about top employers.

The BLS offers industry-specific employment data that identifies the economic trends and opportunities in various fields, jobs, and locations. Providing an in-depth look at specific jobs, the BLS' career pages feature descriptions of tasks and duties, requisite skills and education, job outlook, and salary information.

The unbiased and comprehensive research tools and organizations described above enable CJDS to provide trustworthy information and guidance to our users, helping them make optimal criminal justice education and career choices.

Why We Focus on Education

Criminal justice students and professionals are often drawn to the field out of a desire to serve and protect their communities and society at large. The CJDS team is here to support our users in pursuing this passion for service, justice, and public safety.

The field of criminal justice encompasses an impressive array of exciting fields and potential career paths in law enforcement, the courts, and corrections. CJ's many fields include counterterrorism, criminology, forensic nursing, and emergency management.

In order to navigate this diverse discipline and choose the appropriate educational path for their career, CJ students and professionals typically require guidance. Our career guides make the process easier by enabling users to easily understand and compare career options, requirements, salaries, and job prospects.

Our resources help users sort through the extensive degree options to find the programs best suited for their individual passions, career goals, financial needs, and lifestyles. Our program rankings and degree guides encourage students to evaluate schools and programs based on multiple factors. Equipped with our information on available degree and concentration options, capstone and internship requirements, location, and tuition costs, prospective applicants can make informed program decisions.

In order to increase access to economic opportunity, we aspire to bring educational and career goals within the financial reach of working adults seeking career growth. Our rankings highlight affordable programs and identify the degrees, schools, and career paths with the highest demonstrated ROI.

We connect working adults with online and part-time program options that allow students to pursue education while maintaining an income. We also offer scholarship and financial aid information, helping students pursue education without incurring unreasonable expenses.

By doing the research for our users and providing diverse and relevant resources, we make it easier for current and aspiring CJ professionals to understand and compare available career and education options, make informed choices, and reach their full career potential.

Meet Our Contributors

Reese Lopez

Reese Lopez

As a former teacher and tutor, Reese Lopez draws on over a decade of experience in the education field to inform his writing. After earning his BA in English from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, he instructed English language learners and tutored students at the high school and college level before joining CriminalJusticeDegreeSchools.com. Reese lives in Portland, Oregon, where he also writes fiction and is active in the city's local music scene.

Allison Mandel

Allison Mandel

Allison Mandel is a professional writer, editor, and researcher. She holds a master's degree in elementary education from Brandeis University and a bachelor's degree in sociology from the State University of New York at Albany. From storytelling tips to news reports, Allison's writing can be found in both digital and print contexts, and includes K-6 ELA and mathematics curricula, long- and short-form articles, blog posts, creative nonfiction, and college profiles.

Kathleen Swed

Kathleen Swed

Kathleen Swed is a full-time writer living in New York's Capital Region. She holds an MFA with a concentration in fiction from Pacific University, as well as degrees in music from the University of Maine and Ithaca College. She is the author of several science fiction series, which she writes under the name of Kate Sheeran Swed.

Holland Webb

Holland Webb

Holland's goal as a writer is to take the elements of storytelling and put them to work for businesses with great ideas. In addition to writing content for CriminalJusticeDegreeSchools.com and serving as a featured writer on Compose.ly, he has written website content for a major chain of hotels with locations in North and South America, Asia, and Europe. Holland's other clients have included Sweet Fish Media, Indri Digital, and BioNetwork. He specializes in crafting content for education marketing, B2B technology companies, and nonprofit organizations. He's also the cohost of a podcast called The Afterword, which looks at the intersection of macrotrends and storytelling.

Doug Wintemute

Doug Wintemute

Doug Wintemute is a Toronto-based freelance writer with professional writing interests in higher learning and entertainment. He completed his BA and MA in English at York University, graduating summa cum laude and earning academic merit, research, and writing awards at both levels. Since 2014, he has contributed content and editorial work for award-winning digital trade publications, global SEO copywriting projects, and hugely popular online brands. He can be contacted on LinkedIn.

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CriminalJusticeDegreeSchools.comEmail: [email protected]

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CriminalJusticeDegreeSchools.com is an advertising-supported site. Featured or trusted partner programs and all school search, finder, or match results are for schools that compensate us. This compensation does not influence our school rankings, resource guides, or other editorially-independent information published on this site.

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