While all graduate students are required to complete core courses, students are allowed to select elective courses that match their individual academic and career interests.Core courses are designed to help students understand the purpose and function of criminal justice agencies organized under the rubrics of police, courts, and corrections. Students will be able to critically analyze the organizational effectiveness of criminal justice agencies and understand how society comes to define certain behaviors as criminal and how these definitions can be effected by the race, gender, and socio-economic status of the lawmaker, as well as the lawbreaker. Students will have to assess the effectiveness of criminal justice policies and programs through the application of research methods, statistics, and criminological theory and understand the root causes of crime and the effects of social, economic, political, psychological, and biological factors on crime.