For courses in Introduction to Criminal Justice, Administration of Justice, Criminal Justice, Introduction to Justice Administration.
THE best-selling text in the field, Criminal Justice Today is a contemporary multimedia introduction to criminal justice that provides a realistic description of the American criminal justice system and how it works―police, courts, and corrections. Much more than an “encyclopedia” of criminal justice topics (which is what competing texts often are), it provides an intricately woven picture of contemporary American criminal justice. Using a three-pronged thematic approach, it helps students integrate the wealth of material to which they are exposed, and assumes a forward-looking perspective that recognizes the importance of individual rights, social order, multiculturalism, and high-technology as they affect the day-to-day practice of criminal justice. The complete multimedia learning package features a host of teaching/learning tools that are book-specific and were individually selected or created by the author.
Frank Schmalleger, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, where he chaired the Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice for nearly 20 years. He currently serves as director of the Justice Research Association, a private consulting firm and think tank focusing on issues of crime and justice. Dr. Schmalleger is also founder and codirector of the Criminal Justice Distance Learning Consortium (http://cjcentral.com/cjdlc).
Dr. Schmalleger holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame and Ohio State University, having earned both a master's degree (1970) and a doctorate in sociology (1974) from Ohio State University with a special emphasis in criminology. He served as an adjunct professor at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he helped develop the university's graduate program in Security Administration and Loss Prevention. He taught courses in that curriculum for more than a decade. Schmalleger also taught in the New School for Social Research's online graduate program, helping build the world's first electronic classrooms in support of distance learning through computer telecommunications. An avid Web developer, Schmalleger is the creator of a number of award-winning websites, including some that support this textbook (http://www.prenhall.com/schmalleger; http://cjtoday.com, and http://cybrary.info).
Frank Schmalleger is the author of numerous articles and many books, including the widely used Criminology Today (Prentice Hall, 2002); Criminal Justice: A Brief Introduction (Prentice Hall, 2002); Criminal Law Today (Prentice Hall, 2002); The Definitive Guide to Criminal Justice and Criminology on the World Wide Web (Prentice Hall, 2002); Corrections in the Twenty first Century (Glencoe, 2001), coauthored with John Smykla; Crime and the Justice System in America: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood, 1997); and Trial of the Century: People of the State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson (Prentice Hall, 1996).
Schmalleger is the founding editor of the journal The Justice Professional. He has served as editor for the Prentice Hall series Criminal Justice in the Twenty-First Century and as imprint adviser for Greenwood Publishing Group's criminal justice reference series.
Schmalleger's philosophy of both teaching and writing can be summed up in these words: "To communicate knowledge we must first catch, then hold, a person's interest―be it student, colleague, or policymaker. Our writing, our speaking, and our teaching must be relevant to the problems facing people today, and they must―in some way―help solve those problems."
