Criminal Justice

Purpose: The program in Criminal Justice has a multi-disciplinary focus on crime and its control. The curriculum emphasizes the study of crime and deviance, criminal law, law and social control, the criminal justice process, and administration, management, and research in the criminal justice system. Students are required to complete a number of collateral courses that focus on the larger social, economic, and political environment in which the criminal justice system operates. Courses taught by a multi-disciplinary faculty include classes in criminal justice, public policy, public administration, public law, sociology, research methods, and statistics.

The Political Science Department is the locus of the program with courses of study leading to the B.A, M.A., and Ph.D. in Criminal Justice. There is also a terminal M.A. in political science with an emphasis on global justice and security studies that includes criminal justice coursework.

1. Languages: English is the primary language of the collection. Works written in other languages are ordinarily purchased in translation only.
2. Chronological Guidelines: While the emphasis is on contemporary affairs, certain areas of concentration such as comparative criminal justice systems and the historical development of criminal justice require materials dealing with earlier periods.
3. Geographical Guidelines: Primary emphasis is on the United States. English language material on comparative criminal justice systems are collected regardless of geographical focus.
4. Treatment of the Subject: Lower division textbooks are not generally collected. Popular materials and upper division texts are collected selectively.
5. Types of Material: Most materials acquired are in the form of reference works, bibliographic databases, media, monographs and periodicals. Materials may be in print or electronic format. Legal material acquisition for Criminal Justice follows the guidelines of the development policy for Law.
6. Date of Publication: Emphasis is on current works. Retrospective acquisitions are selective with microform and reprints as an acceptable cost-saving alternative.
7. Other General Considerations: Criminal Justice is a highly interdisciplinary area of concentration with overlapping interests in all the traditional social science disciplines and law. However, the development of Criminal Justice as a distinct academic field has led to a considerable number of outlets for the field's literature and the Libraries collects these journals extensively. For the most part, though, the boundaries of the field are such that many of its needs are served by resources collected for other social science disciplines, including sociology and psychology.

   The Libraries' membership in the Orbis Cascade Alliance allows WSU students, faculty and staff to borrow books from 35 other academic libraries through the Summit WorldCat online catalog; the broader WorldCat system allows easy discovery and interlibrary loan of items not available through WSU or Summit. In addition, the University's reciprocal agreement with the University of Idaho enables faculty, staff and students to make use of their Law Library and their main library.