Every discipline has its own introductory, or survey, course which covers the basics of the field. As students advance in the coursework they will tackle the material in greater detail, but these courses allow students to discover if they are interested in the field. They also allow students who are interested in the field, but don't necessarily want to major in it, to gain a basic knowledge of the field. These courses usually cover the basic role of law enforcement and the functioning of the court system.
Criminology is the field which studies criminals and criminal behavior. The discipline draws from sociology and psychology, applying the work of these fields to studying and better understanding crimes and those individuals who commit them. The field tries to gain a better comprehension of such questions as "why do people commit crimes?" and "Is there such a thing as a natural born criminal?" Understanding the nature of the people who find their way into the criminal justice system helps prepare graduates to deal with them.
Like other academic disciplines, those who study criminal justice seek to better understand crime and theories of crime. To do this, students conduct research into crime patterns and case studies of specific crimes and court trials. Research methods classes teach students how researchers in the field of criminal law and criminal justice go about learning more about the tools researchers have at their disposal to conduct research. This allows students to better understand academic papers and new research in their chosen field.
Like other social science disciplines, those in the field of criminal law and criminal justice use statistics as one of their research tools. This course will build on what students learned in their research methods class, and show students how to use statistics in their criminal law and criminal justice research. These courses will include subjects such as the use of descriptive statistics and how to generate data to produce these statistics. They will also cover advanced subjects such as inferential statistics and using data to conduct hypothesis testing.