criminal justice reflection essay

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Criminal Justice Guide for Graduate Students: Write a Reflective Essay

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• Write a Literature Review
• Write a Thesis
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Writing a Reflective Essay

A reflective essay is a critical examination of a life experience. For students pursuing a Master of Science in Criminal Justice with a Concentration in Theory and Research, a reflective essay means writing about connections between experiences and theoretical concepts learned, and considering future implications. Below are some resources that may help students understand how to write a reflective essay. 

Reflective writing articles and websites

• Scheidegger, A. R. (2020). Incorporating reflective writing into criminal justice courses. Reflective Practice, 21(1), 122-131. If you want to understand WHY reflective essays are powerful learning tools, this essay will explain. In the process of explaining the WHY, the article also helps to demystify HOW to write a reflective essay.
• USC Libraries Research Guides -- Writing a Reflective Paper
• Critical Reflection by University of Waterloo -- Writing and Communication Centre
• The Purpose of Reflection: Why is Reflection Important in the Writing Classroom? by Purdue University Department of English
• A Complete Guide to Writing a Reflective Essay - -Oxbridge Essays

Reflective writing videos

Reflective writing books

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Writing Your Reflection Paper and Essay Exams

Your reflection paper and essay exams should have an introduction, body, and conclusion.

1.  Introduction : summarizes what you will write and puts it into context

• Start the introduction with background that contextualizes the paper's main topic
• End the introduction with a thesis statement, which outlines the main points of the paper and how you will address them

2.  Body : presents the main points of the paper, with each paragraph representing one aspect of the paper's main focus. Prioritize and organize your main points and paragraphs to logically build your arguments to a compelling conclusion. Each paragraph should include a topic sentence, evidence, analysis, and a transition sentence:

• The topic sentence summarizes the paragraph's main idea
• Use evidence from your research sources to support or make the argument for your main ideas
• Analyze your evidence to show how it links to your broader topic
• Include a transition sentence at the end of each paragraph to connect what you discussed in that paragraph with the main idea of the next paragraph

3.  Conclusion : summarizes what you wrote and what you learned

• Restate your thesis from the introduction in different words
• Briefly summarize your main points or arguments and pull them together into your conclusions on your topic
• End with a strong, final statement that ties the whole paper together and makes it clear the paper has come to an end
• No new ideas should be introduced in the conclusion, it should only review and analyze the main points from the body of the paper (with the exception of suggestions for further research)

For more writing help, contact  the Writing Center   and  make an online appointment  to meet with one of their consultants.

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Criminal Justice Reflection

The paper discusses crime and crime scenes as depicted in the article “Policing for Homeland Security Policy & Research“ by Willard M. Oliver (2009). It also looks at the different models of policing that have been developed for this purpose. The paper then explains how current criminal justice professionals are addressing the trend presented in the article. It discusses how this has changed over time, and it also looks at the different ways that policing can be used to achieve homeland security goals. The paper concludes by Reflecting on my belief in this trend and how it will affect my future career in criminal justice.

The crime described in these articles is the Pentagon and World Trade Centre September 11 th  terrorist attacks (9/11). Therefore, in the article, terrorism is the crime, while crime scenes are Pentagon and World Trade Centre. The authors discuss how this event has affected the criminal justice field, specifically in policing and homeland security (Oliver, 2009). Furthermore, they argue that the 9/11 attacks have resulted in a greater emphasis on homeland security and increased funding necessitated for police change departments. The new funding measures have led to new practices and policies, particularly in homeland security. Specifically, the authors discuss how police departments have had to adapt their strategies to address the new challenges posed by terrorism (Stemm, 2022). In addition, they discuss how these changes have increased government funding for police departments due to the 9/11 attacks. This has led to changes in departmental practices, such as the militarization of police forces.

Oliver (2009) argues that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were a watershed moment for law enforcement. Prior to that, agencies had been primarily focused on combating crime and enforcing the law. After 9/11, however, agencies were thrust into the role of protecting the nation from future terrorist attacks. This change in focus has had a number of consequences for the field of criminal justice. To begin with, law enforcement agencies have had to invest more resources in homeland security. This has led to an increase in the number of arrests and prosecutions related to terrorism. In addition, law enforcement agencies have had to change their approach to policing. For example, they have had to shift their focus from investigating crimes to preventing them. Secondly, the task of protecting the nation has led to changes in the way law enforcement interacts with the public. For example, law enforcement agencies have been increasingly reluctant to release information about cases. This has led to a lack of transparency in the criminal justice system.

Current Justice System and September 11 th  Attack

Oliver’s (2009) article highlights the trend that homeland security is becoming a greater priority for the police. Criminal justice professionals are addressing concern homeland security concerns, training and education in these areas, and collaboration and coordination amongst various agencies. Second, this tendency is also changing how police are utilized and deployed, with a stronger emphasis on community policing and reactive policing. Criminal justice experts are tackling homeland security by enhancing collaboration between various agencies and teaching cops how to handle such challenges. This will help ensure that the police can respond quickly and effectively to any potential threats. Moreover, criminal justice professionals are also working to increase the cooperation between law enforcement and the community to build trust and ensure that the community can provide feedback on how policing is being conducted. This will help improve policy practices and ensure the police respond effectively to any potential threats.

The increased focus on security has also had a significant impact on the ability of police to fight crime. The increased procedures and rules required of police make it more difficult for them to patrol the streets and track down criminals, and this has led to an increase in the number of crimes committed (Phillips, 2021). Overall, homeland security changes that have taken place in the field of criminal justice due to homeland security policy have significantly impacted the ability of police to do their job effectively. This has led to an increase in the number of crimes that are committed and an increase in the amount of paperwork that is required to investigate cases. This has made it difficult for police to track the progress of investigations, which has led to an increase in the number of unsolved cases.

I believe the trend of increased focus on homeland security will affect my future career in criminal justice in several ways. First, as someone with a strong research interest, this trend will open up new opportunities for me to contribute to the criminal justice field through policy analysis and research. Additionally, this trend will likely increase the demand for criminal justice professionals with expertise in homeland security as the policy implications of these developments will become increasingly important.

Finally, given my weaknesses in areas such as public speaking and writing clear policy proposals, I anticipate that this trend will challenge me to develop new skills to succeed in the challenging field. While the trend of increased focus on homeland security will have a number of significant impacts on my future career in criminal justice, one of the most significant impacts will be on my ability to develop policy proposals that are clear and concise. Overall, I believe that the trend of increased focus on homeland security will positively impact my future criminal justice career, as it will help me develop the skills necessary to be successful in the field.

Oliver, W. M. (2009). Policing for homeland security: Policy & research.  Criminal justice policy review ,  20 (3), 253–260. https://doi.org/10.1177/0887403409337368

Stemm, A. (2022). Necessary or Outdated: Are Post-9/11 Changes to US Police Forces Still Justifiable? https://digitalcommons.wou.edu/honors_theses

Phillips, B. J. (2021). How did 9/11 affect terrorism research? Examining Articles and Authors, 1970–2019.  Terrorism and Political Violence , pp. 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2021.1935889

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CRM 350: Criminal Justice Ethics (ONLINE): Reflection Papers

• Reflection Papers

Be sure and check with your professor regarding the types of resources you may use for this course.  The links provided on this page are considered scholarly sources, but your professor may require peer-reviewed journal articles.  If in doubt, ask your professor for clarification.  

Reflection Paper #1

Morality and law.

The relationship between morality and law is perhaps the fundamental issue in modern Western legal theory. 

Social Contract

Social contract theories hold that a social arrangement—a set of moral norms or political institutions—and its justification consist in agreement on its terms by those who participate in it. 

Morality Versus Law

From encyclopedia of criminal justice ethics.

Laws are enacted by a legislature. Moreover, in a democracy, by virtue of laws passed by the duly elected representatives of the people, laws reflect the will of the citizenry, or at least this is so by the lights of the standard theory of representative democracy.

From Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice

Morality includes the principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.

Reflection paper #2

Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, from encyclopedia of educational psychology.

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. 

Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Reasoning

From gale encyclopedia of children's health: infancy through adolescence.

Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning is a theory positing six stages of moral development advanced by the American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987).

Kohlberg, Lawrence: Moral Development Theory

From encyclopedia of criminological theory, kohlberg, lawrence.

Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–87) was a Jewish American psychologist born in Bronxville, New York. Specializing in research on moral education and reasoning, he is best known for his theory about stages of moral development, which first appeared in his 1958 dissertation. 

Reflection paper #3

Los angeles race riots of 1992, from encyclopedia of race and crime, king, rodney (1965-).

Rodney Glen King is an African American male who made national headlines after four White Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers were unknowingly videotaped using excessive force against him. The videotape was aired by every major television network across America.

Police, Use of Violence/Excessive Force

From encyclopedia of interpersonal violence, police use of force, reflection paper #4, reflection paper #5, jury selection and behavior, from the encyclopedia of criminology and criminal justice, jury selection.

In the U.S. criminal legal procedure, the voir dire process of selecting jury members has been the focus of intense scrutiny by those concerned about procedural fairness in the criminal justice system.

The jury selection process is one of the most important components in the American criminal justice system; however, it has been questioned whether court participants receive a fair trial under the present process.

from  Handbook of Forensic Psychology: Resource for Mental Health and Legal Professionals

Jury consultants are often engaged well before trial to evaluate the jury pool, for one of two purposes—either to support remedies for pretrial publicity (such as a change of venue (location) for the trial), or to support a composition challenge (a challenge to the racial/demographic composition of the venire). In effect, the trial consultant is asked to aid with determination of the entire jury venue or venire prior to selection of individual jurors.

Reflection Paper #6

Capital punishment, from encyclopedia of crime and punishment, capital punishment, from 21st century criminology: a reference handbook, reflection paper #7, what happens when you put good people in an evil place : philip zimbardo(1933–), from big ideas simply explained: the psychology book, correctional psychology, from gale encyclopedia of psychology, stanford prison experiment, from dictionary of prisons and punishment.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in 1971 by a group of Stanford University research psychologists.

Prison Corruption

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Dostoevsky’s Favorite Murder

The author of “crime and punishment” had a love-hate relationship with the true-crime obsessions of his era..

In the mid-1860s, Russia was in the throes of a true crime craze. Among Czar Alexander II’s sweeping reforms—including, most notably, the abolition of serfdom—were overhauls to the criminal justice system and greater freedom of the press. The introduction of a jury system and the opening of courts to the public turned criminal trials into a new kind of theater, and newspapers—suddenly abundant—were keen to commentate on the show. Russians curious about how justice would be meted out in this new era bought papers like Glasnyi Sud ( Open Court ) and read court stenographers’ reports as if they were lines from a play. Sections like “The Criminal Chronicle” became a regular feature of daily newspapers, introducing new social types like the charismatic defense attorney. One publisher went so far as to say that trials were “superior to novels” in offering insight into human nature. The reading public would not have to choose; detective fiction and the crime novel were quick to emerge out of the swirl of grisly reporting. In the 1860s, to turn the pages of a periodical in Russia meant you were likely to get blood on your hands.

Few people consumed these stories more voraciously than novelist (and ex-convict) Fyodor Dostoevsky. In September 1865, he was staying in the German spa town and gambling resort of Wiesbaden, where he lost nearly all his money at the roulette wheel. He could not pay his hotel bill, and the dining staff had been instructed to stop bringing him dinner. To keep hunger at bay, Dostoevsky decided he would limit the amount of physical energy he exerted. One day, stationary in his room, he read the story of a man who murdered a cook and a washerwoman by bludgeoning them to death with an ax. The newspaper said he was a raskolnik , a schismatic who had rejected Western reforms of the Russian Orthodox Church. Not long afterward, Dostoevsky sent a note to his editor in Saint Petersburg, Mikhail Katkov, telling him he had an idea for a story:

A young man, expelled from the university, petit-bourgeois by social origin, and living in extreme poverty, after yielding to certain strange, “unfinished” ideas floating in the air, has resolved, out of lightmindedness and of the instability of his ideas, to get out of his foul situation at one go. He has resolved to murder an old woman, a titular counselor who lends money at interest.

That young man—a university student who intellectualizes his egoism with the aid of “unfinished ideas” (Western concepts that the nationalist Dostoevsky did not like)—would be given the name Raskolnikov, and what Dostoevsky first conceived as a 90-page story would eventually sprawl into an entire novel that is set in motion by a pawnbroker and her sister having their skulls cracked open with an ax. The specifics of the contract could be worked out later, Dostoevsky told his editor. For now, he needed 300 rubles immediately to pay the hotel.

The religiously devout ax murderer that Dostoevsky read about is not the main subject of Kevin Birmingham’s The Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece . That would be Pierre-François Lacenaire, a poet and serial killer whose 1835 trial had been extensively covered in the French press and captivated the likes of Balzac and Stendhal. Lacenaire was handsome (throngs of women crowded the public gallery in the courtroom), an intellectual (he read Rousseau as he lay in wait for his victim), and not only declined to show remorse but professed an open disdain for morality itself. He was indifferent to his own depravity, and it was electrifying. “I love to see men like that,” Flaubert said of him, “like Nero, like the Marquis de Sade.”

As he unspools the story of how Dostoevsky first encountered the villain Lacenaire, Birmingham places the author in a culture brimming with tales of criminal intrigue and moral transgression—some Dostoevsky had gathered from his time in a Siberian prison, but many he came across as a voracious consumer of what we might now call true crime. As such, Birmingham’s book reads mostly as a biography of Dostoevsky from his youth through the writing of the novel, one that traces how the author’s views on crime were forged between his time in prison for insurrection and his eventual release into a new literary scene that was—by his estimation—dangerously aestheticizing the kinds of criminals he had seen up close and in the mirror.

Crime sold. A dead body, sexual impropriety—or ideally both—moved papers. That Dostoevsky’s editor commissioned Crime and Punishment on the strength of such an opaque proposal was no doubt partly driven by the fact that readers were rabid for all things crime: “The first wave of Russian crime writing was cresting,” Birmingham writes, and “the public was hungry for tales of lurid offenses.” Dostoevsky assured Katkov that the plot “is not at all eccentric,” pointing to recent cases in a similar vein. “He informed Katkov,” notes Birmingham, “that he had heard about an expelled Moscow University student who resolved to kill a postman” and mentioned other criminals he had read about in newspapers, like “that seminarian who murdered the girl in the shed … and so on.”

In fact, just before the first chapters of Crime and Punishment were to be published, newspapers began to report details of a strikingly similar murder case. In Moscow, Birmingham recounts, “a law student named Danilov murdered a pawnbroker in his apartment.… As he was ransacking the place, the pawnbroker’s servant unexpectedly arrived, so he murdered her, too.” In the novel, Dostoevsky places Raskolnikov, both as a writer and reader, into the media landscape of the era. The detective on the case questions him about an article, titled “On Crime,” that he had published in a student journal months before the murder. In it, Raskolnikov argues that there are certain men—great ones—who exist above morality and for whom the act of murder should be sanctioned. Elsewhere in the novel, Dostoevsky has Raskolnikov rush into a tavern looking for a copy of the most recent newspaper, excited to read about his handiwork in the crime pages. But it takes him some time to finally find the story. The criminal world of Saint Petersburg had been busy that week, it turns out.

Even amid a glut of gory tales, the Lacenaire spectacle stood out for Dostoevsky. He first heard the name Lacenaire in 1861, while looking for crime stories to use in the literary journal he published, Time . Leafing through a French collection of criminal profiles, he saw an illustration of Lacenaire’s infamous double murder of a mother and son. In the picture, the finely dressed Lacenaire brandishes an ice pick at the old woman, shown, Birmingham describes, “cowering in her bedclothes, looking up, eyes wide.” The next year, Dostoevsky encountered Lacenaire again, this time in the pages of Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel, Les Misérables —which mentions Lacenaire by name (and many felt the character Montparnasse was no doubt inspired by the genteel killer). Dostoevsky started developing plans to write an article “about instincts and Lacenaire,” but never finished. Lacenaire, with his inchoate, vaguely republican politics—which seemed to exist as a kind of ex post facto justification for his crimes—was a type Dostoevsky believed to be emerging among Russia’s youth: the student terrorist.

The outlines of modern-day terrorism—small, isolated cells of insurgents using violence as propaganda—are said to have emerged in Russia in the 1860s. By the end of the century, terrorism was referred to by those throughout the world—including Karl Marx—simply as “the Russian method.” Universities had been locus points in radical organizing; among the disaffected youth were some who believed the reforms of Alexander II did little to stem poverty and rampant social inequality, and that the country had to be shocked into change. What was needed, they believed, was “a bloody and pitiless revolution, a revolution which must change everything down to the very roots,” declared a pamphlet that landed on Dostoevsky’s doorstep. Many were inspired by a writer and journal editor, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, whose 1863 novel, What Is to Be Done? , was regarded as a kind of bible by its radical adherents. The novel glamorized the lives of self-sacrificing revolutionaries, whose readiness to accept martyrdom made them romantic heroes. Such a blueprint had also been set, notes Birmingham, by Dmitri Karakozov, a university student from a poor provincial family who in 1866 fired a gun at Alexander II as he strolled through the Summer Garden in Saint Petersburg. The attempted assassination of a czar, the first such attack in Russia, may have failed, but—more importantly—the story made the papers. Karakozov wanted, Birmingham explains, “to reset all of Russia’s political machinery with one jarring act of violence and a manifesto amplified by the mass media.”

The power of the press to create celebrities out of criminals was not lost on Dostoevsky, and indeed it figures in Raskolnikov’s psychology after the murder. Political criminals, whose transgressions had the potential to reorder the foundations of society, would become a major subject in Dostoevsky’s later fiction, namely in his novel The Possessed (1872), in which he would try to expose, as he had in Crime and Punishment , what he believed were the misguided and egotistical motivations undergirding the new radicalism.

Was he speaking from experience? Dostoevsky had been arrested in 1849 for his participation in an underground salon whose members read banned works and discussed French Utopian socialism. He had spent the next four years in prison, where he had undergone a political conversion, abandoning the radicalism of his youth to become, on many issues, a conservative. Yet, what incensed Dostoevsky above all about Chernyshevsky was his blind faith in scientific explanations for human behavior. Chernyshevsky became known for a theory he called rational egoism. Inspired by Jeremy Bentham and English Utilitarianism, Chernyshevsky claimed that human behavior was rational in that it was guided by self-interest. If poverty were to be eliminated, he conjectured, crime would all but cease to exist.

Dostoevsky had served side by side with murderers in prison, “sharing tables and latrines with them, hauling bricks with them, sipping water from the same ladles,” writes Birmingham, and could not abide this simplistic view of crime—and by extension of human nature. People were unpredictable, irrational, and often did things that worked against their own interests—this was ugly, but also beautiful, because it was the essence of freedom. Indeed, this is why Crime and Punishment became a crime novel in which the whodunit is answered straight away, leaving the rest of the novel for questions of motive or—more accurately in the case of Dostoevsky—the muddled mess that is human motivation in the first place.

The Lacenaire case was the perfect foil to Chernyshevsky’s theory, because his crimes defied any logical explanation. Spectators were at a loss to understand what propelled a well brought up and highly intelligent young man to stab an elderly woman in the face while his accomplice slit her son’s skull open with an ax. The immediate motive was money, of course. “But that,” writes Birmingham, “did not explain his ruthless indifference, or why he intended to kill people when robbery would suffice.” Lacenaire gave a number of explanations, which just introduced more inconsistency. He claimed to be overcome by “a fixed idea to resist,” but in his memoirs (which were published ahead of his execution) he wrote: “I come to preach the religion of fear to the rich for the religion of love has no power over their hearts.”

The French press seized on the political undercurrents in Lacenaire’s pronouncements. His distaste for authority and for the ruling classes was used to dredge up fear over revolutionary elements in French society. “If one could kill a king for one’s country, then why not kill a banker?” as Birmingham sums up the rhetoric: “Lacenaire’s crime spree was captivating because it seemed to be the revolution’s next rational step.” This was a reach. In attributing Lacenaire’s crimes to politics, the press was imposing an uncomplicated narrative on what Dostoevsky would have recognized as the chaos of human ego and the mysteriousness of our actions.

In Crime and Punishment , Dostoevsky used the public’s appetite for crime stories as a kind of Trojan horse, a way to launch a polemic under the guise of titillation. Dostoevsky denies Raskolnikov the glamour of a martyr and presents him instead as an angry and confused young man, humiliated by poverty and acting out of shame. Or at least that is what he thought he had done. In something of a plot twist, following the success of Crime and Punishment , defense attorneys in nineteenth-century Russia began comparing their clients to Raskolnikov in an attempt to garner sympathy with the jury.

Raskolnikov and his crimes continue to bleed into real life. Once, during a study abroad trip in Saint Petersburg, my teacher encouraged me to go on the Crime and Punishment walking tour. One of the attractions, she explained, was the apartment building where Raskolnikov kills the pawnbroker. It was and is a very popular tour, but I was confused—“none of this actually happened,” I thought. I went and got lunch instead.

I have never quite gravitated to books promising to uncover the “true stories” that inspired great works of fiction. If anything, I am more fascinated by moments when fiction starts to infect reality, when characters we read about on the page start to shape what we expect out of one another off it. I think Birmingham would agree. Lacenaire makes up far less of his narrative than one might expect. Instead, he shows us that Dostoevsky is both the “sinner” and the “saint,” a repentant political criminal who wanted his characters to inspire not fervor but fear—of our worst instincts.

Jennifer Wilson is a frequent contributor to The New Republic .

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