John Jay College Of Criminal Justice | The City University of New York

   

New York, NY, June 18, 2008 – Arizona State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice today announced the establishment of a partnership that is designed to develop cross-country criminology programs, enhance research efforts and strengthen ties between academia and practitioners. This partnership will foster the sharing of research and promote the development of important relationships with our academic peers which in turn will enable our Colleges to provide our students with the most comprehensive criminal justice and public service education.

“This creates a bi-coastal effort to inform such criminal justice issues as immigration and border security, street gangs and violence, and offender re-entry programs,” says John Hepburn, Dean of the College of Human Services at Arizona State.  “John Jay is among the best in the country at educating, training and working with criminal justice professionals, and this partnership offers us the opportunity to merge our areas of expertise to service a larger and more complex community.”

“Both ASU and John Jay have dynamic, rapidly expanding faculties and large, diverse student bodies.  As a result, this partnership has endless possibilities for our students, faculty and research centers,” commented James Levine, Dean of Research at John Jay College.

Scott Decker, director of the school in ASU’s College of Human Services, noted,  “Our focus at ASU is on enhancing the quality of life in our community and doing so through research that improves the human condition and advances society by solving real-world problems.”

“The study of certain issues such as immigration and law enforcement are particularly suitable to this partnership.  New York City historically has been a center of immigration and Arizona currently is experiencing major challenges at its border.  The two partners are planning to have faculty and students study such matters and may indeed apply for funding to support this collaboration,” said Professor Karen Terry, Executive Officer of the CUNY Doctoral Program in Criminal Justice at John Jay.

Exchange programs involving students are already underway.  Last month, 10 ASU graduate students and one undergraduate spent a week at John Jay where they visited a local jail, a specialized court and attended seminars/classes.  Earlier this month, 10 John Jay students attended ASU.  While there, they went to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Douglas, a medium-security prison facility in the central part of the state, the Tents Jail (known locally as “Tent City”) adjacent to the Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix, and attended a “Violence in America” seminar hosted by the school.

About John Jay College of Criminal Justice: An international leader in educating for justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York offers a rich liberal arts and professional studies curriculum to upwards of 14,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 135 nations.  In teaching, scholarship and research, the College approaches justice as an applied art and science in service to society and as an ongoing conversation about fundamental human desires for fairness, equality and the rule of law. For more information, visit  http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/.