Law is one of the most complex and challenging career paths, regardless of your ultimate choice of specialization. And considering the importance of eloquence and writing skills in the legal field, term papers are common for all law students. Professors make the task harder by leaving the topic choice to students. Do you need help with your term paper in criminal justice? We strive to make your life easier by sharing 150 excellent criminal justice and criminology topics to ignite your creativity.
What Is a Criminal Justice Term Paper?
You don't have to be a pre-law or law school student to write a term paper on criminal justice. Although it's always related to the criminal justice system, the topic can deal with anything from policy to ethics, sociology, and the economy. As long as it fits your class syllabus and major, you can write a criminology term paper on almost any issue.
Although each professor has a unique set of requirements, most pay attention to three aspects of the paper:
- Research. Credible, reliable, and objective sources should be the core of your reference list, especially those published within the last five to ten years.
- Analysis. Your take on the problem based on what you've learned from research is equally important and should span no less than 50% of the paper.
- Form and style. Proper formatting and citation matter as much as the word choice and phrasing, especially if you have to present the term paper or are training to become a lawyer.
Criminal Justice Research Fields
There's no shortage of criminal justice term paper topics because the field is so broad and varied. For example, while criminology studies criminal behavior, victimology is solely dedicated to crime victims, whereas crime justice is usually concerned with prosecution, incarceration, and rehabilitation efforts. Depending on the class you're taking, you can focus your study on one of the following fields:
- Criminology
- Crime scene processing
- Victimology
- Crime economics
- Criminal justice litigation
- Sociology of crime
- Organized crime, etc.
How to Choose Great Criminal Justice Term Paper Topics
Choosing a term paper topic for criminology or criminal justice class is tricky because the options are endless, and the time is limited. Your topic should be relevant but not so obvious half of your class will write about it. It should also be challenging enough to deserve the top mark but not too impossible to research within the timeframe. Your research question should have real-life value and impact but, at the same time, be narrow enough to fit the assignment scope and word count.
After you've discarded the first three ideas that'd come to mind and settled on a potential research issue, go through our checklist questions. If you can firmly answer in the affirmative to most of them, you've made the right choice. Otherwise, keep looking.
- Does the topic fit your class syllabus and assignment prompt?
- Does the topic have a real-life impact on a large scale?
- Does the issue have personal significance to you?
- Is the issue controversial enough to allow for solid counterarguments?
- Can you find enough sources to support your argument within the deadline?
- Does your TA or professor approve of the topic?
- Do you have a clear understanding of the issue?
- Are you excited to learn more about the topic?
If you've answered in the negative to 4+ questions, make the most of our topic list to find a better idea.
Freshman Criminal Justice Term Paper Ideas
In your first year, professors won't expect deep dives into niche topics, so you should focus on the basics. If you're not sure where to start, consider one of the criminal justice 101 term paper ideas on our list:
- The relationship between the major components of the criminal justice system
- The current trends and potential changes in the criminal justice system
- The key factors slowing down the criminal justice system
- The cooperation of law enforcement and the criminal justice system
- Inducing policy changes in the American criminal justice system
- Typical uses of statistical analysis in criminal justice investigations
- The differences between the real and fictional criminal justice system
- The influence of policy-makers on criminal offense penalties
- Overview of effective communication modes in the criminal justice system
- Terrorism threat response within the criminal justice system
Basic Criminal Justice Term Paper Ideas
If you don't have any preferences and need to get the paper done as soon as possible, check out the following list of criminal justice term paper topics that should fit almost any class:
- Comparison of public and private penitentiary facilities
- The legal complications of domestic violence cases
- Effective use of precedents in workplace harassment cases
- The adverse effects of gender bias in criminal investigations
- Historical evolution of criminal justice ethics in the US
- The impact of religious offenses on the crime rate
- The differences in the prosecution of war crimes versus peace-time offenses
- The relationships between substance abuse and crime rate
- Effective violent crime prevention measures for school campuses
- The appropriate violent crime punishment for people with schizophrenia
- The adoption of smart algorithms in a criminal justice system
- Researching the punitiveness among criminal justice students
- Evaluating the role of the government in the criminal justice system
- Assessing the effectiveness of the sentencing mechanism of the US criminal justice system
- An overview of strategic litigation in the international criminal justice system
Controversial Criminal Justice Term Paper Topics
If you need to submit a compelling argumentative or persuasive piece, you need a debatable issue and a hot take to grab the professor's attention. And below, you'll find a few ambitious ideas to score the top mark:
- The ethics of capital punishment versus lifetime imprisonment
- Evaluating the reliability of eyewitness reports
- Limiting the rights of police officers to reduce brutality
- Assessing the prevalence of racial bias in criminal investigations
- Identifying the most common causes of campus violence
- Analyzing the influence of song lyrics on crime popularization
- Comparing the prostitution and solicitation punishments across states
- The relationship between medical marijuana legalization and crime rate
- The legal grounds for using sniffer dogs to locate drugs
- The efficiency of mental disability defense across different US states
Criminal Justice Term Paper Topics on Racism & Discrimination
Inequity and bias undermine the effectiveness and reliability of the justice system and order. If you're interested in addressing discrimination issues, consider writing a term paper in criminal justice on one of the following topics:
- Evaluating the prevalence of gender bias in witness selection
- The relationship between crime rate and immigration
- Public perception of the systemic racism in the criminal justice system
- The implications of structural racism for the criminal justice system
- The adverse social effects of racism in law enforcement
- The nature of structural racism in the criminal justice system
- Addressing racial inequity in the American criminal justice system
- Analyzing statistics of law enforcement brutality towards people of color
- The impact of criminal justice on native American societies
- Analyzing incarceration rates among black transgender women and black men who have sex with men
- The treatment of aboriginal women within the justice system
- The injustice of institutional racism in the US
- The effectiveness of diversity courses among criminal justice students
- Improving gender responsiveness within the criminal justice system
- Suggesting criminal justice reform to address racial bias
Criminal Justice Research Topics on Criminal Law
If you're interested in policies as an underlying foundation of the justice system that require an overhaul, you may find the following topic suggestions helpful:
- Balancing the protection of society and individuals in criminal law
- Analyzing modern criminal law policy trends
- The role of criminal law in virtual environments
- The increasing role of judicial interpretation of criminal law
- The impact of a victim's legal status on the criminal legal theory
- The historical role of humanism in the development of criminal law
- Optimization of the enterprise criminal law-based copyright protection
- Assessing the intersections between criminal law and human rights
- The role of the generality of penalty in criminal law
- The challenges of developing transnational criminal law
- Liberalization and humanization of criminal law policy
- Free will and guilt in criminal law through the neurobiology lens
- Comparative analysis of criminal law policy in the US and Canada
- The role of criminal law as a society regulation tool
- Overview of AI applications in substantive and procedural criminal law
Courts and Criminal Justice Term Paper Topics
Courtrooms highlight the significant advantages and shortcomings of the modern criminal justice system. So if you'd like to take a closer look at court dynamics, consider one of the ideas below:
- Analyzing the inefficiency of procedural communication in criminal justice court
- The role of the Attorney General's office in the criminal justice system
- The impact of the International Criminal Court on national justice systems
- The changes in criminal justice court over the last 40 years
- The effect of Supreme Court's rulings on state criminal justice
- Assessing the criminal justice court experiences of deaf people
- The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the US criminal justice court
- Court specialization for transforming the criminal justice system
- The shortcomings of the international justice system in peacekeeping
- An overview of institutional corruption in the criminal justice system
Criminal Justice Research Topics About Victimization
Victimology focuses on the experiences and protection of the victims, so it's an equally important and challenging aspect of criminal justice. Our list of crime victim term paper ideas may inspire you to take a closer look at the human side of crime:
- Analyzing the criminal justice terms of victimization aspect of domestic violence
- Victimology analysis of the victims of online dating scams
- Comparative analysis of international victim rights
- An overview of the legal protection of victims under criminal law
- Assessing latent victimization of the population
- An overview of environmental crime victims under the criminal justice system
- The impact of victimology on criminal justice policy
- The role of victim narrative in the criminal justice system
- The emergence of green victimology
- Analyzing the victim-offender relationships
Criminology Term Paper Topics
The causes of criminal behavior and crime itself are the subject of criminology research. So if you want to take a deep dive into the mind of a perpetrator, consider one of the following criminology term paper topics:
- The effect of activism criminalization on society polarization
- Analyzing the intersection of historical and narrative criminology
- The impact of biosocial criminology on criminal justice policy
- Approaches to removing racial bias from criminology
- Transforming the rehabilitation system through redemptive criminology
- Assessing climate change from a criminological perspective
- An overview of online methods in qualitative criminology
- Criminology application in international crime investigations
- The potential of positive criminology adoption
- The significance of historical criminology
- A historical overview of research on biological causes of delinquency
- Analyzing the relationship between criminal law and criminology
- The effect of social democratic criminology on crime rate
- The use of social media platforms for criminology research
- Criminological approach to digital crimes of the 21st century
Crime Economics Term Paper Topics
The complicated relationship between crime and money is the subject of many studies and will remain relevant. So if you're interested in criminology research topics with a hint of economic analysis, you may find our suggestions helpful. In addition, we've made a list of up-to-date topics for your economics term paper.
- Distortions of financial resources distribution caused by organized crime
- Economic incentives and social networks of crime
- The relationship between housing prices and crime rate in the US
- Economic analysis of the connection between crime rate and education level
- The evolution of the crime economics research field
- Investigating the impact of government economic policies on crime
- Economical analysis of crime and law enforcement efforts
- Analyzing the causes of socioeconomic crimes
- Assessing the economic determinants of crime rate
- The effect of prison crime on the economics of incarceration
Term Paper Topics: Crime and Sociology
The ongoing "nature vs. nurture" debate is especially pertinent for criminal justice studies. Below you'll find a few intriguing term paper ideas for sociology of crime that might catch your eye:
- The potential uses of data for predicting and mitigating violent crimes
- The impact of environmental sociology on crime
- An overview of the current state of the digital sociology of organized crime
- Analyzing the representation of crime in literary fiction
- Assessing the crime waves throughout US history
- The primary social determinants of deviant behavior
- Determining the distinction between white-collar and street crime
- The theoretical basis of crime convenience
- An overview of women-committed crime in the early 20th century
- The mischaracterization of crime in the news and film
- The causes of genocide from a sociological perspective
- The effect of racial or ethnic neighborhoods on crime rate
- Analyzing the grounds for the rise of financial crime
- The use of machine learning in criminology research
- The impact of crime on the dwellers of rural areas
Organized Crime Term Paper Topics
Organized crime is one of the most challenging and rewarding topics to write a term paper in the criminal justice field. So if you're ready to work hard to impress your professor, one of the following issues can help you achieve the top mark:
- The effects of organized crime on law enforcement effectiveness
- Causal complex and directions of organized crime prevention
- Prosecuting organized crime as financial crime
- The cross-border impact of organized crime
- Analyzing modern approach to the criminal investigation of organized crime
- The relationship between organized crime and human trafficking
- Harm assessment methodology for organized crime research
- Prevention and eradication of transnational organized crime
- Assessing co-offenses among criminals engaged in organized crime
- The effect of drug trafficking on organized crime
Crime Scene Term Paper Topics
If you're interested in forensic analysis and the ways it affects investigation and litigation, consider one of the following topics for a term paper on crime scene processing:
- The role of crime scene documentation in criminal investigations
- Modern approaches to crime scene reconstruction and event analysis
- The added value of behavioral information in crime scene investigations
- Identifying primary and secondary crime scenes based on solid evidence
- The impact of crime scene processing on murder investigations
- Analyzing the relationship between psychopathy, offending style, and crime scene behavior
- The benefits of a science-based approach to crime scene processing
- Forensic evidence archiving best practices in crime scene investigation
- The value of crime scene sketching and measurement
- The uses of augmented reality in crime scene investigations
Criminal Justice Term Paper Writing Tips
Whether you're working on a term paper on crime scenes or the economy of organized crime, the following tips are universal and apply to any class and assignment:
- Be careful to cite every source. Unintended plagiarism will steal points off your grade, so it's better to be safe than sorry.
- Use appropriate language. Do not overdo legal jargon; keep your word choice clear and direct instead of relying on multisyllabic thesaurus monstrosities.
- Check your paper against the rubric. It's your insight into the professor's grading process, so make your piece fit every major criterion.
- Get occasional feedback. If the time allows, attend office hours and ask the TA or professor about topic choice, outline, sources, etc.
- Edit and proofread thoroughly. Dedicate as much time to polishing as you do writing to make your first draft as close to perfect as possible.
Are You Struggling With Your Criminal Justice Term Paper?
Choosing an excellent topic is barely the first step to completing the assignment. Next, you'll need to research the issue, screen sources, craft an outline, write, edit, and proofread the paper to score the top mark. Unfortunately, that isn't always possible, especially when you're running out of time and your energy is low.
Still, there's no need to despair. When you need urgent criminal justice term paper writing help, contact OrderTermPaper writing service. Our team of experienced academics will handle any topic and deliver a flawless piece even if you only have a couple of days before the submission deadline. So get in touch, and our support agents will find the best expert to help you.
FAQ
What Is Term Criminal Justice Term Paper Format?
A typical criminal justice term paper includes an introduction, literature review, analysis, and conclusion, though it may need additional sections, depending on the prompt. Most schools require the APA formatting and citation style, though you should request clarification if the requirements in the prompt are unclear.
How to Write a Criminal Justice Term Paper?
To write a criminal justice term paper, split the task into manageable chunks. First, choose a topic and find reliable sources. Next, research the issue and outline your paper. Fill in the outline, edit, and proofread the first draft. Finally, format the piece according to style requirements and submit it before the time runs out.
What's a Good Criminology Term Paper Topic?
Anything from racial and gender bias to AI application in the justice system can be a good term paper topic. As long as it fits your assignment requirements and class syllabus and is interesting, it's an excellent research question.
