Unique Opportunities

Our students prepare for a variety of fields, including criminal justice, policy, law, politics, and social justice. To help you meet your career goals, we offer you a series of unique opportunities and experience.

• Inside-Out is a program that provides CJS students with the opportunity to take classes with incarcerated communities inside a local jail or prison. CJS faculty who offer courses in this program have received certifications from the National Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. Each semester, CJS offers one section of a CJS elective or core requirement as an "Inside-Out" course. To participate in the course, interested students much submit an application to the instructor and be accepted into this classroom. Both CJS and incarcerated students who participate receive university credits.
• Study Abroad is an option through which you can travel with one of our professors to take CJS courses abroad. We have an established program in Mexico for students to complete upper and lower level courses. For more information, email Eric Larson.
• We work with UMass Law to provide an accelerated option through which some of the credits you take here will count towards your Law Degree should you decide to attend UMass Law after graduation.
• You have the opportunity to participate in The Washington Center internship program to fulfill your senior internship requirement. The program, which is offered through Career Services, provides you a 10 or 15-week credit-bearing internship program in Washington, D.C. or abroad. 
• Independent Studies with Department Faculty on topics that may interest you but are not regularly offered in the curriculum.

The CJS Committee Against Racism and the Crime and Justice Studies Department 

Fall 2021 

Dear UMass Dartmouth students, colleagues, and campus community members, 

In an ongoing context of racist violence in college and university settings, the Department of Crime & Justice Studies at UMass Dartmouth continues to condemn all forms of racial and ethnicity targeted violence. In particular, two events this semester led to the creation of this statement.  First, the email sent to students on the campus of UMass Amherst in September was an abhorrent display of violence that has no place in an educational institution. Second, the 3 November email notification from the Chancellor regarding a racist incident on UMass Dartmouth’s campus that week and the need for the University to respond more swiftly to identity-based violence.

As a department concerned with the myriad forms of oppression that hinder justice, it would be remiss if we did not address the racisms that continue to plague our own campuses. Our unrelenting rejection of racism is integral to the core of our departmental values and to the larger goals of justice. CJS Faculty do not simply teach anti-racism, we embody in our scholarship and in our pedagogy. We are committed to the dismantling of a society entrenched in white supremacy. Fundamental to this dismantling, particularly in academia, is the refusal and remedying of hostile educational environments. As faculty, we are accountable to fostering more critical and just classroom spaces grounded in anti-racism, and we are invested in supporting student activism and their lived experiences. 

To students, staff, and fellow colleagues across the University of Massachusetts system: We support you.

To Black and African Diaspora students, staff, and fellow colleagues at UMass Amherst and UMass Dartmouth who were targets of racial violence: We are in solidarity with you.

To everyone in our classes and on our campuses, who demand justice and an end to racial violence: We rise up with you to work together. 

Institutions are accountable to its community members.  We offer the following as sources of institutional support to members of our campus community who are impacted by this violence: 

• UMassDartmouth Care Network
• UMassDartmouth Bias & Hate Resources
• UMassDartmouth Office of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
• UMass Dartmouth Diversity Resources

Additionally, for allies and those committed to equity, we implore you to review the following resources on how you can support your peers and demand justice from your campus administrators: 

Resources for understanding, identifying, confronting, disrupting and dismantling white supremacy: 

• Wakelet
• Racial Equity Tools: System of White Supremacy and White Privilege
• White Supremacy Culture Resources

Reading for racial justice 

• Dismantling Racism Works Web Workbook
• Racial Equity Tools

In solidarity, 

The CJS Committee Against Racism and the Crime and Justice Studies Department 

Fall 2021