Certificate in Advanced Crime Analysis
Crime Analysis plays a critical role in the day-to-day operations of any Police Bureau. Portland State University offers an online Certificate of Advanced Crime Analysis that provides hands-on educational training for those aiming to become a central figure in crime prevention. Your training will be led by distinguished faculty who regularly collaborate with criminal justice professionals. Program coursework teaches the student to use geographic information and software to analyze and identify areas prone to criminal activity.
Why a Certificate in Advanced Crime Analysis?
The Criminology & Criminal Justice field is growing. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, career growth for Criminal Justice professionals is expected to increase by nearly 24% by 2012. Earning your certificate from PSU now will put you on track to take full advantage of this growth.
Curriculum
As a student in the Criminology & Criminal Justice program your curriculum will be designed by industry experts. Here are just some samples of the courses you’ll be able to take:
Crime Analysis
An introduction to the basic methods used in analyzing data from criminal justice agencies, including temporal and spatial analysis of crime patterns, calculation of crime rates, descriptive analyses of victim and offender characteristics, recidivism, and the identification of offense typologies. Students get hands-on experience coding, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting crime data from a number of sources like police homicide reports, the FBI, Department of Corrections, and attitudinal surveys.
Crime, Grime, and Fear
Course designed to study the social, economic, political, and physical factors underlying neighborhood crime and decline. Special attention is given to physical and social incivilities, the “broken windows” theory, police-community partnerships, and problem-solving. Students will work on neighborhood-centered projects to explore solutions to neighborhood crime patterns, disorder, and fear of crime, and ideas for strengthening police-citizen relations, and community building.
Applied Crime Mapping
This course will provide students with the technical and analytical skills used in crime mapping. Various mapping applications will be made available to students for the geographic examination of crime data. As this course is an introduction to mapping software, no prior GIS knowledge is required. Students will learn to create useful maps that convey spatial crime data and the relationships between crime and other geographic features.
What Our students Are Saying
“At my age, working full time and having a seven year old, I thought school was not an option for me, but I was wrong. PSU’s Criminology and Criminal Justice online program has made it possible. I owe my success and happiness to PSU!”
Letty Smith, Graduate
Class of 2008
Rankings
For the seventh year in a row, Portland State University’s community-based learning curriculum is among the best in the nation according to U.S. News & World Report. Portland State is ranked among the top public institutions nationally under the section “Choosing a School: Programs to look for” in five categories: Internships, First-year Experience, Senior Capstone, Learning Communities and Service Learning.
Portland State University has also been named a Best Western College by the Princeton Review. This prestigious honor is a reflection of Portland State’s commitment to rigorous curriculum strategy and thorough instruction from world-class faculty.
Accreditation
Portland State University is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges & Universities*, an institutional accrediting body recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation and the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, based on approved performance standards.
*Northwest Commission on Colleges & Universities, 8060 165th Avenue N.E., Suite 100 Redmond, WA 98052 • Web: www.nwccu.org