NYPD Executive Master's Curriculum

Begins an overview of the operations and problems of the criminal justice system. Examines crime statistics, the causes of crime and other issues of concern to criminologists. Highlights the role of the courts and the legal constraints derived from the Constitution on arrest, prosecution and conviction.

Continues the overview of the criminal justice system. Focuses on the police and other law enforcement agencies and the process of arrest. Explores issues in corrections, especially imprisonment and alternatives to incarceration, including probation and parole.

Presents the nature of the research process and guidelines for formulating research questions and testable hypotheses. Reviews the methods of operationalizing variables and indicators and collecting data, including designing experiments and carrying out surveys. Explains data analysis strategies leading to a written report. 

Introduces the use of software programs to search for relationships and patterns in data sets, and to calculate the statistics needed to draw interpretations and conclusions in research reports.

Offers an introduction to policy analysis and criminal justice planning. Explains how to assess proposals intended to solve problems encountered in policing, adjudication and corrections.

Examines the controversies between race and crime in America, now and in the past. Discusses the competing definitions of race, crime and violence. Investigates the legacy of slavery and the impact of restrictive immigration laws.

This course familiarizes students with the fundamentals of policing in a free society.  Focused not just on professional comeptency of the police, the course looks at the importance of politice legitimacy in the eyes of the public and the idea of achieving a social contract with communities to encourage law abiding behavior.  Particular attention will be given to the complexity of achieving this in a diverse community with histories of racial and ethnic conflict.

Considers the major issues confronting administrators of large urban police departments, such as professionalism, recruitment, selection, training, deployment, innovation, evaluation, and charges of brutality, inefficiency and corruption.

Assists in the identification and delineation of researchable criminal justice topics and methodologies. Reviews the process of writing scholarly and research reports, library research and documentation styles. Required for those who have chosen to write a thesis.

Offered as an independent study with the student’s thesis adviser, this course assists students in developing their thesis and bringing it to fruition.