Advanced Crime Analysis Track
Recent innovations in law enforcement like Problem-Oriented Policing, Intelligence-Led Policing, and Predictive Policing share one thing in common: they rely extensively on analysis of criminal justice data to develop victim/offender profiles and identify patterns in the geographic and temporal distribution of crime. Portland State University’s Criminology & Criminal Justice (CCJ) program provides students the opportunity to learn the skills needed to conduct these analyses through a specialized track in the fully-online BA/BS degree or through a stand-alone Advanced Crime Analysis Certificate program. Delivered by PSU’s knowledgeable criminal justice faculty, the Crime Analysis courses provide you with the training you need to make a difference, while allowing you the flexibility to reach your goals on your schedule.
Benefits to the Advanced Crime Analysis Track
Portland State University is committed to providing you with the resources needed to be successful in this area. As a student in the CCJ-Online program’s Crime Analysis track you will:
- Train in ArcGIS, the crime mapping software used by many law enforcement agencies
- Analyze real crime data from the FBI, local authorities, and the Department of Corrections
- Learn to use MS Excel, PowerPoint, and Word to present findings from your analyses
- Study neighborhoods to identify criminogenic factors
A Message from Our Students
Chris is pursuing his online Bachelor’s of Criminology & Criminal Justice with focus on Advanced Crime Analysis. His ambition goes beyond just acquiring his bachelor’s degree and he sees the PSU online Criminology & Criminal Justice degree as a good way to get there. Here he shares his some of the reasons he enjoys the program:
“I really enjoy the flexibility. For people juggling families and careers, this is an ideal way to increase your education. Although the classes are demanding, online learning gives the student the opportunity to work around their other responsibilities. I actually prefer it to sitting in a classroom. There is no commute, no traffic and no parking hassles. The time spent on schoolwork can be maximized. Completing the program will give me confidence not only in my ability as a student, but also as a future professional in the field of Criminology/Law Enforcement.”
Dynamic Education
As a student in the Criminology & Criminal Justice program your curriculum will be designed by academics that play key roles in making improvements to the practice of criminal justice. Here are just some samples of the courses you’ll be able to take:
Crime Analysis
CCJ 340 Crime Analysis is designed to provide students with the basic skills necessary to work in this growing area of data collection and review. The course starts off with an orientation to criminal justice data sources (e.g., UCR, SHR, NIBRS) and relational database design. It then moves on to cover basic analytic procedures used by crime analysts, including the calculation of crime rates, percent change over time, frequency tables, and measures of central tendency and dispersion. The central focus of the class, however, is learning to use MS Excel to analyze real crime data. Among the skills you will learn are the creation and management of spreadsheets, filtering data, temporal analysis, the use of PivotTables, and graphing. Fill out the form to view a video about the Crime Analysis course and view a full course summary.
Applied Crime Mapping
This course will provide students with the technical and analytical skills used in crime mapping. Various mapping applications will be made available to students for the geographic examination of crime data. As this course is an introduction to mapping software, no prior GIS knowledge is required. Students will learn to create useful maps that convey spatial crime data and the relationships between crime and other geographic features.
Crime, Grime, and Fear
Student in this class study the social, economic, political, and physical factors underlying neighborhood crime and decline. Special attention is given to physical and social incivilities, the “broken windows” theory, police-community partnerships, and problem-solving. Students work on neighborhood-centered projects to explore solutions to neighborhood crime patterns, disorder, and fear of crime, and ideas for strengthening police-citizen relations, and community building.