43 Criminal Justice
Basic Statistics Using R for Crime Analysis
Jaeyoung Choi, West Chester University
Licence: CC BY-NC
Limited access to subscription-based statistical software poses obstacles when students want to apply the skills they acquired in college. Although students may learn programs like SPSS or Stata while at the university, they often find themselves unable to continue using these programs after graduation, making their acquired skills obsolete. As an open-source software program, R offers a solution to this challenge. It is freely accessible to anyone, including students, after they graduate. Therefore, I decided to write a freely available book for those interested in becoming crime analysts, focusing on learning statistics without delving too deeply into mathematics. Moreover, this book emphasizes practical applications by utilizing R for data analysis, ensuring students can develop relevant skills beyond the university. I hope that students can easily follow the instructions in this book and replicate the same outcomes using the provided data. This practical experience will demonstrate the value of statistics and R, ideally inspiring students to further their learning in these areas.
Formats: PDF, Ebook
Suggested for: CRJS 494
Criminology
Ilgin Yorukoglu (Borough of Manhattan Community College)
Licence: CC BY
Formats: Online, EPUB, PDF, and more
Decolonization and Justice: An Introductory Overview
Edited by Muhammad Asadullah (University of Regina)
2022
Licence: CC BY
Decolonization and Justice: An Introductory Overview emerged from the undergraduate students’ final assignment in JS-419 on Advanced Seminar in Criminal Justice at the University of Regina’s Department of Justice Studies. This book focused on decolonization of multiple justice-related areas, such as policing, the court system, prison, restorative justice, and the studies of law and criminology. This is quite likely one of the few student-led book projects in Canada covering the range of decolonization topics. Ten student authors explored the concept of decolonization in law, policing, prison, court, mental health, transitional justice and restorative justice.
Formats: Online, EPUB, and PDF
eAccess to Justice
Edited by Karim Benyekhlef (Université de Montréal), Jane Bailey (University of Ottawa), Jacquelyn Burkell (Western University), and Fabien Gélinas (McGill University)
2016
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
Will digitization projects affect fundamental justice principles? Part I examines claims that technology will improve justice system efficiency with an emphasis on the complicated relationship between privacy and transparency. Part II examines the implementation of technologies in the justice system and the associated challenges and emphasizes that these technologies should be implemented with care to ensure the best possible outcome for access to a fair and effective justice system. The chapters in Part III adopt the standpoints of sociology, political theory and legal theory and provide a unique and valuable framework for thinking with the required sophistication about legal change. (Description from UO Press)
Format: PDF
Feminist Advocacy, Family Law and Violence Against Women: International Perspectives
Edited by Mahnaz Afkhami (Women’s Learning Partnership), Yakın Ertürk and Ann Elizabeth Mayer (University of Pennsylvania)
2019
Licence: CC BY
Around the world, discriminatory legislation prevents women from accessing their human rights. It can affect almost every aspect of a woman’s life, including the right to choose a partner, inherit property, hold a job, and obtain child custody. Often referred to as family law, these laws have contributed to discrimination, and to the justification of gender-based violence globally. This book demonstrates how women across the world are contributing to legal reform, helping to shape non-discriminatory policies and to counter current legal and social justifications for gender-based violence. The book takes case studies from Brazil, India, Iran, Lebanon, Nigeria, Palestine, Senegal, and Turkey, using them to demonstrate in each case the varied history of family law, and the wide variety of issues impacting women’s equality in legislation. Interviews with prominent women’s rights activists in three additional countries are also included, giving personal accounts of the successes and failures of past reform efforts. Overall, the book provides a complex global picture of current trends and strategies in the fight for a more egalitarian society. These findings come at a critical moment for change. Across the globe, family law issues are contentious. We are simultaneously witnessing an increased demand for women’s equality and the resurgence of fundamentalist forces that impede reform, invoking rules rooted in tradition, culture, and interpretations of religious texts. The outcome of these disputes has enormous ramifications for women’s roles in the family and society. This book tackles these complexities head on, and will interest activists, practitioners, students, and scholars working on women’s rights and gender-based violence. (Description from Routledge)
Format: PDF
Forensic Toxicology: From Crime Scene to the Virtual Lab
Dr. Sanela Martic
2022
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
Take a virtual tour from fundamental toxicology through laboratory demonstrations to court cases that focus on analysis, interpretation and reporting of toxicological results in a forensic science context.
Formats: Online
Suggested for: CRJS 494
Injustice at the Intersections: Race, Gender, Class, and Criminal Justice
Indigo Koslicki, and Andrew C. Gray (Ball State University)
2024
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
Injustice at the Intersections is the first U.S.-based Open Textbook about race, gender, class, and criminal justice. While traditional textbooks are often expensive and require continuous publication of new editions to keep up with changing legislation and events, we wrote this Open Textbook under a CC BY-NC-SA license, meaning that instructors may revise, update, and change content as needed for changing events and different learning outcomes. We also plan to regularly update this Open Textbook and will always keep it free, as we believe that knowledge is the first step towards justice.
Format: PDF
Introduction to Criminal Investigation: Processes, Practices and Thinking
Rod Gehl and Darryl Plecas
2017
Licence: CC BY-NC
Introduction to Criminal Investigation, Processes, Practices, and Thinking, as the title suggests, is a teaching text describing and segmenting criminal investigations into its component parts to illustrate the craft of criminal investigation. Delineating criminal investigation within the components of task-skills and thinking-skills, this book describes task-skills such incident response, crime scene management, evidence management, witness management, and forensic analysis, as essential foundations supporting the critical thinking-skills of offence validation and theory development for the creation of effective investigative plans aimed at forming reasonable grounds for belief. The goal of the text is to assist the reader in forming their own structured mental map of investigative thinking practices.
Formats: Online, PDF, MOBI, EPUB, and more
Introduction to Criminal Justice: Operations, Obstacles, and Outcomes
Indigo Koslicki, Ball State University
2025
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
Introduction to Criminal Justice: Operations, Obstacles, and Outcomes is an Open Textbook that brings the foundations of the criminal justice system and current events and issues to an accessible format, where readers may interact with multimedia content in addition to traditional text.
Formats: PDF
Introduction to Criminology
Shereen Hassan and Dan Lett (Kwantlen Polytechnic University)
2023
Licence: CC BY
This textbook focuses on criminology from a Canadian perspective. As a whole, the OER is amply broad to serve as the main textbook for an introductory course, yet each chapter is deep enough to be useful as a supplement for subject-area courses; authors use plain and accessible language as much as possible, but introduce more advanced, technical concepts where appropriate; the text gives due attention to the historical “canon” of mainstream criminological thought, but it also challenges many of these ideas by exploring alternative, critical, and marginalized perspectives.
Formats: Online, PDF, EPUB
Introduction to Criminology: An Equity Lens
Jessica René Peterson, Southern Oregon University; Taryn VanderPyl, Western Oregon University; Mauri Matsuda, Portland State University; Jennifer Moreno, Western Oregon University; Curt Sobolewski, Portland State University
2025
Licence: CC BY
Introduction to Criminology provides a foundation for understanding the origins, evolution, and current status of criminological theories. This textbook explains the field of criminology and influential theories in context, with real-life examples and activities. All content is delivered through a lens of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Each chapter includes bold-faced key terms with definitions and cross-references that link backward and forward to important concepts. Students can also engage with the content through discussion questions and supplemental resources at the end of each chapter.
Formats: Online, PDF, EPUB and more
Making Sense of a Global Pandemic: Relationship Violence & Working Together Towards a Violence Free Society
Balbir Gurm, Glaucia Salgado, Jennifer Marchbank, and Sheila Early (Kwantlen Polytechnic University)
2020
Licence: CC BY-NC
This online book provides a wealth of information on relationship violence focusing amongst other things on definitions; the scope of the problem, theoretical frameworks, interventions and prevention strategies. It provides information on legal statutes (Provincial; Federal and International) and contains numerous links to additional resources to inform the reader. The book also highlights some emerging issues such as the importance of cultural safety; relationship violence in the workplace and on post-secondary campuses.
Formats : Online
Mental Disorders and the Criminal Justice System
Anne Nichol, Portland Community College; Kendra Harding, Portland Community College; Monica J. McKirdy, Linn-Benton Community College
2025
Licence: CC BY-NC
This is an introductory textbook exploring the management and treatment of people with mental disorders throughout the criminal justice system.
Formats: Online, EPUB, PDF, and more
Suggested for: CRJS 360
Psychoactive Substance Use and Social Policy
Jacqueline Lewis (University of Windsor)
2022
Licence: CC BY
This open educational resource is developed as a third-year level, university course on Psychoactive Substance Use and Social Policy. It includes 10 weeks of digital course content, usable as a stand-alone or supplemental course package, or single chapters can be incorporated into courses on related topics. The course is designed so that it can be taught in several ways: as a fully online asynchronous course, or as a flipped learning hybrid course combining asynchronous learning via the Pressbook content with face-to-face class and small group discussion (either online or in person). Course materials innovatively combine chapter content, with embedded links to audio/video material and short readings. A set of required additional readings are included at the end of each chapter. Materials come from a variety of sources (e.g., scholarly publications, government and non-governmental reports, the Conversation, media reports, other internet content, etc.). Each chapter starts with several questions for students to think about as they complete the chapter materials and ends with an assignment designed to enhance critical engagement with issues relevant to the topic. Chapter assignments can be assigned as individual or group projects (face-to-face or via synchronous breakout groups during class time) or some combination of the two. The questions at the start of each chapter can also be used to guide class discussion.
Formats: Online, EPUB, PDF, and more
Research Methods for Criminal Justice Students
Monica Williams, Weber State University
2022
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
This book is based on two open-access textbooks: Bhattacherjee’s (2012) Social science research: Principles, methods, and practices and Blackstone’s (2012) Principles of sociological inquiry: Qualitative and quantitative methods. I first used Bhattacherjee’s book in a graduate-level criminal justice research methods course. I chose the book because it was an open educational resource that covered the major topics of my course. While I found the book adequate for my purposes, the business school perspective did not always fit with my criminal justice focus. I decided to rewrite the textbook for undergraduate and graduate students in my criminal justice research methods courses. As I researched other open- educational resources for teaching social science research methods, I found Blackstone’s book, which covered more of the social science and qualitative methods perspectives that I wanted to incorporate into my book.
As a result, this open-access textbook includes some content from both previous works along with my own additions based on my extensive experience and expertise in conducting qualitative and quantitative research in social science settings and in mentoring students through the research process. My Ph.D. is in Sociology, and I currently teach undergraduates and graduate students in a criminal justice program at Weber State University. Throughout my career, I have conducted and published the results of research projects using a variety of methods, including surveys, case studies, in-depth interviews, participant observation, content analysis, and secondary analysis of quantitative data. I have also mentored undergraduates in conducting community-based research projects using many of these same methods with the addition of focus groups and program evaluations.
Formats: PDF
