criminal justice

Author: Katherine Jurak, Kent State University

It’s in headlines wherever you look: the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial. Whether you’re tuning into television news, opening a paper or news app or checking your Twitter, or even scrolling on TikTok, it also seems like everyone has an opinion to share or is at least excited to participate in the thrill of watching it unfold.

The question, “Do prisons have air conditioning?” isn’t something that the public would typically ask, but it’s an important topic for those interested in criminology and the criminal justice system to consider. The treatment of prisoners is paramount, as it affects multiple, diverse aspects of incarceration.

In a culture ever more dependent on technology and the internet—for education, work, entertainment, and connection to our communities—it should come as no surprise that people behave online much as we do in person: with a mixture of kindness and cruelty, combining the best and worst of human intentions.

There are three reasons why you should earn a 100% online Master of Arts in Criminology and Criminal Justice at Kent State University:

There are currently two million individuals incarcerated in American jails and prisons. In the past 40 years, the prison population in this country has grown by 500%. According to The Sentencing Project, this unprecedented increase is due more to the changes in criminal justice policy and sentencing laws than to changes in the nation’s crime rates.1 Another recent, disturbing trend in criminal justice has been the significant increase of deaths—nearly one-third of them attributable to suicide in jails and prisons.2

Determining what degree field you’d like to explore more, means learning the subtle nuances of that degree. Case in point, what is the difference between criminology and criminal justice? These two terms seem similar in use because the career paths from both can overlap.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, you likely use encryption daily. Sending emails or text messages, using fitness trackers that communicate with apps on your phone, accessing an online banking portal and retrieving photos or files from cloud storage all take advantage of the security features of encryption. But there’s an ongoing debate about whether tech companies should be held legally responsible for de-encrypting devices seized by law enforcement.

Penal labor in the U.S. is explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment of our Constitution. The amendment outlaws slavery or involuntary servitude in the U.S., except when serving as punishment for a crime where the person has been “duly convicted”. In the most generous light, you could see this as a way to provide training and work to inmates, but in reality, it’s often used in the U.S. to close budget gaps with cheap labor and to offset the cost of running a prison.

In 1996 Congress passed the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) to decrease the instances of litigation brought to the courts from incarcerated people. For the 25 years since the PLRA was signed into law by President Clinton, prison reform and advocacy groups have challenged the act as another obstacle to justice for the nearly 2.3 million prisoners in the U.S.1, specifically by denying equal access to the courts of the United States.