MSU • • • • • • BY ALAN HARMAN

The graduates of MSU’s School of Criminal Justice - which celebrated it 50^th anniversary in 1985 - are not surprised by such stories.

"Our school is the oldest continuing degree-granting justice administration program in the world," Professor Robert C. Trojanowicz, director of the 19-member faculty, said. More than 6,000 graduates from all over the world have passed through the school.

Trojanowicz sees the diversity of the school’s program attracting both students and career officers in the criminal justice community. He credits "our linkage in both practice and research with the criminal justice community, the research the facility has done and continues to do. We’re different because we have both an academic program and a training program - a lot of universities don’t."

Programs held this year for officers include:

Contemporary patrol techniques, held in conjunction with the Northern Virginia Criminal Justice academy;

Police-community relations for the command officer;

A holistic approach to criminal justice training dealing with jail inmate suicides, mentally-ill inmates, and jail litigation;

Jail training for community mental health staff;

New perspectives on field training officer programs: New data, new techniques geared for the 1990s and beyond;

Protecting against civil and vicarious liability suits.

Annual programs include:

Foot patrol seminar(April 7 - 8);

Small jail, lockup, and detention facility management and operation;

Suicide prevention in jails, lockups and other secure holding facilities (April 1- 12);

Executive and mid-management development and team building;

Strategies for dealing with problem employees;

Forensic pathology: Investigation of violent death.

30 Years Ago

The school pioneered criminal justice research more than 30 years ago, especially in the area of police-community relations, substance abuse, forensics, and police operations. The National Neighborhood Foot Patrol and National Polygraph centers are at the school. In addition, a series of projects where juvenile delinquency and adult corrections are studied are held at MSU.

The Neighborhood Foot Patrol Center is a clearing-house of state-of-the-art information on the subject. It sees foot patrol as an exercise in communication - an attempt to develop rapport between officers on the beat and the public they serve.

Foot patrol officers instruct citizens in crime prevention techniques and link them to available government services. They are the catalysts of neighborhood organization. Citizens respond to these signs of police concern and begin to work for improvement in the community.

Experts from MSU and officers from the pioneering Flint, MI, Foot Patrol Program are available for free on-site technical assistance visits to communities developing foot patrol programs. They will help communities tailor their program to local needs and conditions.

Regular seminars are held at the center for citizens, police officers and community leaders who want detailed, practical information on foot patrol programs. The seminars include trips to Flint to see the program in operation there.

"Training courses are primarily for people working in the criminal justice system," Trojanowicz said. "That training can range from a one-day program on such subjects as vicarious liability or preventing suicides in the jail all the way up to individually tailored programs that can last up to a year for international visitors.

"Usually a person in one of those programs would be exposed to the criminal justice system in Michigan and other parts of the U.S. We would obtain specific research writing that has been done on their areas of interest. We would arrange contacts with relevant people. In other words, they would use the university and the school of Criminal Justice as the hub of their activity." The result is the school attracts students and criminal justice professionals from all over the world.

The chairman of the Philippines Police Commission is an MSU graduate. So is the dean of the South Korean Police college. High-ranking officers from such diverse locations as the Netherlands, West Germany, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Britain have also attended the school.

In the United States, graduates fill senior positions in organizations ranging from the Secret Service, U.S. Customs and the Drug Enforcement Administration to the security departments of the major car manufacturing companies.

The chairman of the school’s jubilee committee was H. Stuart Knight (class of 1948), retired director of the Secret Service. Vice-chairmen were: Wayne L. Hall(1950), Director of security Ford Motor Co.; Gordon W. Kettler (1964), director of security General Motors; and Theodore L. Vernier (1957), chief investigator, Chrysler Motor Corp.

The state of Michigan has about 15 different departments and in five of them the deputy directors are from the school. A number of graduates have retained their connection with the school and return as part-time lecturers.

Internships

"An important school component is what we call an internship program," Trojanowicz said. "Students can spend up to 16 weeks with an agency nationally or internationally and receive college credit, graduate or undergraduate."

"Right now we have about 18 internships with the federal government - in this case U.S. Customs - where they work with a federal agency for two six-month rotations while pursuing their degree. They’re employed, assuming they work out, upon graduation.

"We have an academic program, but we try to keep a practical aspect as well. We have a constant link with the community, we see what is happening in the community, do research in the community, and then have feedback to us as academicians to refine theories in research.

"We don’t get involved in conventional police training such as firearms, first aid or pursuit driving. That is left to police academies once they have left the university. Our training is more in the realm of management training and dealing with contemporary issues facing police, security and corrections managers."

"We try to respond to the concerns and demands of the criminal justice public. Preventing suicides in jails is a big issue today so the corrections community might ask us to gather experts and go out on training program and we will.

Training can range from a one-day program on such subjects as vicarious liability or preventing suicides in the jail, all the way up to individually-tailored programs that can last up to a year for international visitors.

"They might come to us and want some information on executive level management relative to dealing with stress. We have a program, for that."

Since 1962, the school has been home to Professor Louis R. Radelet, one of the pioneers of police community relations. When he moved to MSU, Radelet joined other innovators in criminal justice at the school - Ralph Turner in forensics, Art Brandstatter, Robert Scott in corrections, Frank Day in law and James Brennen in juvenile delinquency, to name a few.

Radelet became one of the founders of the National Center on Police and Community Relations at the school. For 15 years, until 1970, Radelet helped organize the annual National Institute on Police and Community Relations.

The aim of the annual conferences was crime prevention by promoting inter-professional approaches to community problems, enhancing coordination of the criminal justice process, fostering interracial and intergroup understanding, and strengthening equal protection under the law for all persons.

The conferences started with about 150 police and community leaders. They were ended in 1970 because the concept had proven so popular the conferences had become unmanageable with more than 800 attending.

Although he is officially retiring, Radelet will still operate from his MSU office, continuing consulting and research work on his specialty. He has written two books, one with Brandstatter. Radelet’s "The Police and the Community" (MacMillan1986) is one of the definitive college textbooks. In its fourth edition, the book is used in 300 colleges.

This year the school has about 600 undergraduates seeking a bachelor of arts degree. Those taking the forensic sciences component get a bachelor of science degree. There are 115 students seeking a master of science degree and 72 Ph.D. students working on a doctorate in social sciences.

Forensic Laboratory

The school has a forensic sciences laboratory with $250,000 of equipment. The work there is not simply educational. The laboratory operates closely with the Michigan State Police and regularly works on their cases. Staff have testified locally and nationally as expert witnesses.

Until 1970, the school was known as the School of Police Administration and Public Safety. The name choice came about because of the school’s growing roll in the wider criminal justice field.

The school had its origins in recommendations from a nation crime commission established in 1925, a Michigan state crime commission set up in 1929, and a U.S. attorney general’s conference on crime in 1934.

The first approach to form the school was made - unsuccessfully to the University of Michigan. An approach was then made to Michigan State College, as MSU was then known. The program was approved July 31, 1935. Four months later, 28 freshmen and 11 sophomores and juniors enrolled in the new program. The first three students graduated in 1938.

Trojanowicz is confident that the school will continue to grow and become even more important to law enforcement around the world.

"Reprinted with permission from  the March 1988 issue of LAW and ORDER magazine"
 
 

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