Criminal Justice in Action

CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN ACTION remains the most career-oriented text available -- with first-person accounts of criminal justice jobs to expose students to the wide range of rewarding careers available in the field. Students also learn essential facts on each career choice, including job qualifications, annual salary range, and Social Media Career Tips to help them navigate their criminal justice careers in this age of interconnectedness. New "Getting LinkedIn" margin features give practical advice for using the social media platform to explore opportunities in 16 CJ professional fields.

The layout of each chapter title page more clearly connects the Learning Objectives to the chapter's headings. Each chapter continues to have eight to ten Learning Objectives, which are placed within the margins of the chapter to highlight the content, and then used as the basis for the chapter summary. This effective integrated system of Learning Objectives reinforces student understanding and aids in learning assessment.

The Comparative Criminal Justice feature offers students a global perspective on criminal justice, highlighting the various ways countries can handle crime, law enforcement, courts, and corrections. Getting a glimpse of different methods helps put the American criminal justice system into perspective. Seeing the ways that the different parts of the criminal justice system fit together is not always simple. The Mastering Concepts features give students an extra review of difficult-to-grasp topics, often by comparing and contrasting, so that similarities and differences between related concepts can be more easily identified.

Each chapter ends with a "Policy Matters" feature designed to give students an in-depth understanding of a thought-provoking issue in criminal justice. It includes a summary of the topic, statements from observers on each side of the policy "fence," and two critical analysis questions that act as a conceptual review of some of the chapter's main topics. An Internet research and writing assignment pushes students to probe further and give their own opinions. Topics include campus concealed carry (Ch. 1), local police and immigration law enforcement (Ch. 5), and solitary confinement (Ch. 14).

A new "Getting LinkedIn" feature in each chapter further burnishes the text's career advice credentials. These short marginal features identify a particular field of interest and prompt students to use the social media platform as a resource for more information, providing a valuable glimpse at the "real world" of the job search. Professions covered include the substance abuse counselor (Ch. 2), the forensic scientist (Ch. 6), the restorative justice practitioner (Ch. 11), and the juvenile probation officer (Ch. 12).

Discretion in Action" features give students the chance to "step in the shoes" of a CJ professional. After being presented with the facts and the law that applies to the situation, students use their best judgment in resolving the problem and can check Appendix B to learn how a real-life practitioner reacted in a similar situation. New topics include the prosecution of juvenile "sexters" (Ch. 1) and domestic violence offenders (Ch. 3), police use of deadly force (Ch. 6), the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof in criminal trials (Ch. 10), and violent threats made on the Internet (Ch. 16).