Criminal Justice: A Brief Introduction (4th Edition)

Written by an author dedicated to making the subject of criminal justice interesting for students, this streamlined paperback focuses directly upon the crime picture in America and the three traditional elements of the criminal justice system: police, courts, and corrections. It uses real-life stories throughout that are designed to capture and sustain the attention of its readers and guide them towards achieving a meaningful and comprehensive understanding of the concepts covered in this dynamic field of study.

FRANK SCHMALLEGER, Ph.D., is director of the Justice Research Association, a private consulting firm and think tank focusing on issues of crime and justice. The Justice Research Association, which is based in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, serves the needs of the nation's civil and criminal justice planners and administrators through workshops, conferences, and grant writing and program evaluation support. JRA also sponsors the Criminal Justice Distance Learning Consortium (CJDLC). CJDLC resides on the Web at http://cjentral.com/cjdlc

Dr. Schmalleger holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame and Ohio State University, having earned both a master's (1970) and a doctorate in sociology (1974) from Ohio State University with a special emphasis in criminology. From 1976 to 1994, he taught criminal justice courses at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. For the last 16 of those years, he chaired the university's Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice. As an adjunct professor with Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, Schmalleger 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 has also taught in the online graduate program of the New School for Social Research, helping to build the world's first electronic classrooms in support of distance learning through computer telecommunications. An avid Web surfer, Schmalleger is also the creator of a number of award-winning World Wide Web sites, including one that supports this textbook (www.prenhall.com/schmalleger ).

Frank Schmalleger is the author of numerous articles and many books, including the widely used Criminology Today (Prentice Hall, 1999); Criminal Justice Today (Prentice Hall, 2001); Criminal Law Today (Prentice Hall, 1999); Corrections in the Twenty-First Century (Glencoe, 2001); Crime and the Justice System in America: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997); Trial of the Century: People of the State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson (Prentice Hall, 1996); Computers in Criminal Justice (Wyndham Hall Press, 1991); Career Paths: A Guide to Jobs in Federal Law Enforcement (Regents/Prentice Hall, 1994); Criminal Justice Ethics (Greenwood Press, 1991); Finding Criminal Justice in the Library (Wyndham Hall Press, 1991); Ethics in Criminal Justice (Wyndham Hall Press, 1990); A History of Corrections (Foundations Press of Notre Dame, 1983); and The Social Basis of Criminal Justice (University Press of America, 1981).