Crime and Community Mapping –  Certificate

For information contact Professor Scott A. Hoke, sahoke@cedarcrest.edu, 610-606-4666, ext. 4454

The certificate in crime and community mapping is designed to offer students the opportunity to become proficient in a skill that is highly marketable in the criminal justice and social service professions. Over the past two decades police and, to a large degree, criminal justice agencies in general, have experienced pressure to prevent behavior from occurring rather than simply responding to it. This demand has been met by the development of mapping technology that allows agencies to evaluate patterns of behavior geographically, developing interventions that are responsive to the patterns that arise. In addition, criminal justice agencies have begun to recognize that the analysis of data and the development of community responses based on the data are important components to the prevention of deviant behavior.
The certificate is comprised of four courses:

1. CRJ 110 Introduction to GIS and Crime mapping - This course is designed to introduce the student to one of the most popular pieces of criminal justice technology in the field today. The ability to analyze information geographically is important not only in the field of criminal justice but also in fields such as psychology, social work, business, marketing, public health, and a wealth of others. Developing an understanding of the geographic distribution of a wide range of events, conditions, and patterns is essential in developing interventions and strategies that that are effective at addressing the distribution issue. This course will introduce the student to the mapping software and allow the student to begin to understand how to geographically display a variety of different social conditions and community information.
2. CRJ 210 Advanced Crime and Community Mapping – This course is designed to advance the skills that were obtained in the introductory mapping course. The course assumes that the student has a basic understanding of the GIS mapping software and is intended to present for discussion advanced topics such as map animation, hot spot analysis, creating buffers, distance analysis, and querying maps. Once completed the student will be able to demonstrate an advanced level of understanding as to how to map community incidents and information.
3. CRJ 310 Crime and Community Development - This unique community-lab based experience is an application course where students will demonstrate the ability to manage different types of geographic information using the ArcGIS software. Working independently on different data sets, each student will work to identify how geography can enhance ones understanding  of the relationship between crime and the social conditions that influence it and business development.     
4. CRJ 212 Problem-oriented policing – Over the past four decades the function of law enforcement has changed dramatically. Police are no longer simply expected to respond to crime: they are now expected to prevent it. This course will focus on one of the founding concepts of this movement: problem-oriented policing. This style of police organization focuses on the identification and resolution of community problems, and the partnering between community agencies and police; rather than on traditional arrest and patrol practices. Students will learn the concepts behind the practice of problem-oriented policing and will learn how to apply them in an attempt to solve community problems. 

OR

1. CRJ 311 Crime and Place - This course focuses on the social ecology of crime in that it examines the relationship between crime, victimization and the environment.  Ecological theory examines spatial and temporal patterns of criminal conduct and victimization.  This course also examines community and environmental strategies which have been developed to reduce the likelihood of criminal behavior.

Supporting Fields of Study

There are a number of different certificate programs offered at Cedar Crest College that support the concepts and knowledge base provided by the criminal justice program.  Any of these would provide the student with a well-rounded educational experience and the ability to enhance one’s employment credentials.

Child Welfare Certificate (15 credits)
Cedar Crest offers an interdisciplinary Child Welfare Certificate to provide the knowledge and skills needed to work with children and adolescents.  This certificate is designed to educate social work, psychology, nursing, criminal justice and other related majors for specialized training for work in the child welfare system.  Child welfare is one of the oldest fields of practice and there is an increasing demand for qualified workers to enter child welfare service settings.  Possible careers in child welfare include: protective services, foster care, adoption, family preservation programs, child custody and family court evaluation, maternal and childcare, school counseling and school social work, group home and residential home case workers.

Human Resource Management Certificate (12 credits)
This certificate is tailored to meet the needs of those who require a broad understanding of the expanding area of human resource management in public or private organizations. Both conceptual and skill-building opportunities are offered in many areas, some of which include organizational staffing and development, economics, business communications, psychology, compensation administration, and personnel legalities. This certificate is intended for those who wish to pursue greater professional opportunities within human resource management, or to make a career change into the human resources area. Students must complete 60% of the course work for this certificate at Cedar Crest College.