A message from the Chair of Criminal Justice & Criminology, Professor Dean Dabney
Welcome to the Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology, housed within the nationally ranked Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. The department is home to a diverse group of people, programs, and initiatives. We are led by 20 nationally and internationally recognized faculty who excel in research and teaching across a host of specialty areas: urban violence, crime policy, policing, cybercrime, victimology, biosocial criminology, drug markets, social justice, and legal issues.
In line with the core tenet of our college’s namesake, Ambassador Andrew Young, the department is actively engaged in generating evidence-based policy that “seek[s] to change the world one idea at a time.” Our faculty members occupy lead roles on over a dozen externally funded research awards totaling in excess of $2 million annually, serve as editors on five different peer-reviewed journals, provide training to public and private criminal justice authorities, and sit on a host of local, state, and national policy boards.
The department strives to lead the field with its innovative approach to scholarship and pedagogy. Our no-cost course initiative will make us the first undergraduate program in the nation to offer our students a pathway to earn their degrees without incurring a single dollar for their course materials! As a driving force in AYS Open, the scholarly works of our faculty and the published works of our journals are made available to the world at no cost. We play a lead role in the Andrew Young School‘s’ Digital Landscape Initiative to provide data analytics and evidence-based cybersecurity training, and harness the power of big data, state-of-the-art tools (e.g., social network analysis and experimental design), and unmatched partnerships with justice entities to study and define the future of crime and society’s response to it.”
We hope that you enjoy your time perusing our website, taking in all the exciting initiative we have underway. I sincerely hope you will join us as we “seek to change the world one idea at a time.”
Dean Dabney
Professor and Chair, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology