CRJ 635 Community Initiatives in the Justice System
This course addresses emerging innovative community-based strategies, tactics, programs, projects, and policy initiatives involving the collaborative efforts among police agencies, other governmental agencies, and a wide variety of non-governmental community partners, including non-profit organizations, community groups, and faith-based organizations to address community crime problems, disorder, fear of crime, and quality-of-life issues. This course focuses on recent pioneering efforts to address these community issues through the examination of recently published community policing demonstration projects supported through grants from federal, state, and non-governmental organizations. For an understanding of community-based collaboration for addressing community problems, the course will provide a foundational understanding of the principles of community policing, community partnerships, and problem-solving through multi-organization collaboration. In addition, the course addresses new evidence-based approaches to crime and disorder. The course culminates with students creating a proposal for a creative micro-grant community policing demonstration project involving community collaboration, with a faith-based component, to address a specific crime, disorder, fear of crime, or quality of life problem.