Community Justice Minor

The Community Justice minor uses interdisciplinary analyses to expose students to different ways of thinking about and enacting community-based approaches to justice—including alternative justice strategies, community-based economic development and community wellness, especially to address racial and economic inequity and the prison industrial complex.

Students explore the development of legal, economic, social, educational and health alternatives at the local level to complement and/or transform traditional public safety strategies and to strengthen the capacity of families, friends and neighborhood groups to address root causes, resolve conflict and establish meaningful justice, peace and community well-being.

What Is Community Justice?

• Community-based approaches to justice
• Community engagement and resident involvement in justice decision making
• Problem-solving justice and prevention
• Healing and restoration
• Healthy communities and community asset building
• Full accountability, citizen and criminal- justice-system partnerships in oversight
• Community policing
• Alternative sentencing and sentencing circles
• Community courts
• Racial, gender and economic equity
• Restorative justice

Career Paths

Criminology, Criminal Justice, Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology

Students minoring in Community Justice learn about alternative theories, strategies and practices to transform the current criminal justice system and the prison industrial complex and focus on prevention, problem solving, community wellness and equity. With a toolbox of community-based approaches to justice and strategies for community engagement and restorative justice, criminologists, police officers, corrections officers, fire fighters, lawyers and judges, researchers, college professors, justice activists, etc., will be better informed, more effective in their work, and have more experience engaging with or managing alternative practices.

Law & Forensics

Students minoring in Community Justice learn about alternative legal and community-based strategies and practices to transform the current criminal justice system and the prison industrial complex and focus on prevention, problem solving and community wellness. Such knowledge helps them to become better informed attorneys, police officers, firefighters, forensic psychologists and scientists capable of addressing institutional racism and the needs of diverse clients and capable of thinking out of the box and transforming existing inequities.

Human Services

Community Justice Minors use the knowledge they gain about community-based approaches to justice, restorative justice, community asset building and community wellness to become effective, transformative social workers, public service managers, healthcare providers, community organizers and/or community activists focused on equity, prevention and empowerment in an increasingly diverse society.

Credits Required: 18

Part I: Required Courses

• AFR 145: Introduction to Community Justice in Human Systems OR
• AFR 121: Africana Communities in the U.S. OR
• AFR 140: Introduction to Africana Studies
• AFR 227: Community-based Approaches to Justice
• AFR 315: Community Justice Practices in the Africana World

Part 2: Electives
Choose any three from a variety of courses including the following AFR courses. At least one must be a 300-level course or higher.

• AFR 215: The Police and Urban Communities
• AFR 243: Africana Youth and Social Justice Struggles
• AFR 229: Restoring Justice: Making Peace and Resolving Conflict
• AFR 237: Institutional Racism
• AFR 317: Environmental Racism and more in Bulletin

NOTE: Students may NOT minor in both Africana Studies and Community Justice. Students majoring in Human Services and Community Justice may use up to two courses to satisfy both the HSCJ Major and the CJ Minor (AFR 145 and AFR 227). No other courses/electives may overlap. Please see the Minor coordinator for course planning.

Minor Coordinator

Crystal L. Endsley, cendsley@jjay.cuny.edu