Matthew J. Sheridan - Exploring and Understanding Careers in Criminal Justice: A Comprehensive Guide

Exploring and Understanding Careers in Criminal Justice

Exploring and Understanding Careers in Criminal Justice

A Comprehensive Guide

Matthew J. Sheridan and Raymond R. Rainville

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

Copyright 2016 by Rowman & Littlefield

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rainville, Raymond R., 1943- author.

Exploring and understanding careers in criminal justice : a comprehensive guide / Raymond R. Rainville and Matthew J. Sheridan.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4422-5430-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4422-5431-2 (electronic) 1. Criminal justice, Administration ofVocational guidanceUnited States. 2. Law enforcementVocational guidanceUnited States. I. Sheridan, Matthew J., 1948- author. II. Title.

HV9950.R35 2016

364.024'73dc23

2015026494

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication by Matthew J. Sheridan

For Mom; Lynda, my wife; and McKenzie, my daughter, who have provided love, encouragement, and support. For my father, who would have loved to have seen this.

For Ron Sopenoff, who gave me my first college position. For Don Halsted, who encouraged me to write and is no longer with us to see one task come to fruition. For the many who have been beacons of light when there was darkness.

For every student who sat before me and taught me what they needed to know. Hopefully, every student who now reads this book will be helped toward a successful career.

Dedication by Raymond R. Rainville

For Pat, my wife, support, and friend. For Pat, who walked with me for over fifty years. We had a long journey together, starting during my undergraduate days, through good times and bad times. She always supported me, was always patient through graduate schoolnot once, but twicefive children, and 100,000 miles, and we are still together. Without her help, this book would not be. For Pat, who always allowed me the time to be me.

For Gerald Shattuck, a graceful guide to Fordham. I went into the doors of Fordham University and out into the world with changed views and attitudes. What a spectacular professor, mentor, and lifelong friend.

For all the friends, coworkers, professors, supervisors, and students who have helped me develop into the person I am today.

Contents

Preface

W e have spent countless hours listening to students talk about their career aspirations and what they believe are the steps to entering the profession. We believe that Exploring and Understanding Careers in Criminal Justice: A Comprehensive Guide is a critical and much-needed book for students preparing for college and who are beginning their pursuit of a criminal justice career. We have heard the comments of fellow faculty members who field the myriad questions asked by students of their experiences and of the students reactions to their presentation of work and duties that they previously did not comprehend. This book is also for faculty/advisors of students. Unfortunately, we have also encountered students who have labored through their studies, received excellent grades, and then during their internships in the third or fourth year, discovered that their career choice was poorly considered. With that said, this book is also for guidance counselors and others who would discuss the various career opportunities in criminal justice with students. The pursuit of a degree in criminal justice, as a stepping-stone to a career, will help the student to make choices that will not limit him/her to the more commonly considered occupations in criminal justice. This guide will better prepare students for the many career opportunities to be encountered as a career unfolds.

Exploring and Understanding Careers in Criminal Justice: A Comprehensive Guide is designed to be a road map through the quagmire of choices that face the new career employee by suggesting that they plan their career in increments through the acquisition of additional education and skills to meet the needs of a changing world. Certainly, since 9/11, the work of criminal justice and the employment opportunities in this area have undergone revision, if not drastic changes.

Exploring and Understanding Careers in Criminal Justice: A Comprehensive Guide will help students expand their focus and intensify their preparation through the understanding that a career is part of their lives and that proper planning will result in greater satisfaction and achievement. There is more to life than a career. However, careers do play a major role in life satisfaction. In addition, other considerations go beyond the career that affect the life plan. This book will help the student and the advisor to evaluate those life choices.

Exploring and Understanding Careers in Criminal Justice: A Comprehensive Guide will help students assess their career aspirations. The authors wish all students a successful career through good planning.

Acknowledgments

W e are only as successful as those we have behind us. Family represents our strength and motivation. Many circumstances also guide us, and our students have served as beacons of light. We hope that those seeking careers in this profession will be better at it than we werechoosing, advancing, and looking back with a sense of accomplishment.

We thank our colleagues at Rowman & Littlefield, beginning with Kathryn Knigge, who did not know our original intentions for the book but saw them in the prospectus and suggested the way we should proceed. She did not know that our original vision was greater than we actually suggested. Kathryn, you also suggested steps we did not foresee, and those were improvements on our design.

Introduction: Why Another Book on Criminal Justice Careers?

C rime and criminals intrigue and capture not only our attention but our imagination. Newspapers, TV, and radio reporting typically begin with the latest and most graphic, sensational criminal event. The more extraordinary the crime, the sooner someone writes a book about it, and the names of the judge, the cop, the prosecutor, or the offender become household names. Some of the more popular TV shows today are centered on crimes and criminals. One show has a serial killer solving other crimes by serial killers; others are about criminal profiling, and one is even about probability theory as a means to solve and prevent crime. Of course, forensics, homeland security, and terrorism have grabbed their share of viewers attention, as well, and have become all the rage. New college courses and majors have appeared in colleges and universities centered around featured professions such as federal marshals, crime scene investigators, medical examiners, forensic scientists, FBI agents, criminal profilers, and others.

Many were glued to their televisions, waiting to see what secrets would be revealed when Geraldo Rivera opened the lost vault of Al Capone. Viewers were equally disappointed to see that it was empty. Many of the better actors, from Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Cagney to Clint Eastwood, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, and Denzel Washington, have cemented their reputations by starring in criminal roles that depict someone, real or fictional, in the field of criminal justice. Literature, both adult and juvenile, from Sherlock Holmes to the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew to the novels of James Patterson, are rife with crime, crime-solving, and superior criminals sought after by superior crime solvers.