March 11, 2009

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The UAB Department of Justice Sciences is ranked seventh in the nation for grant dollars received, at $2.4 million between 1997 and 2007, and ranked 10th nationwide for the number of individual grant awards won by a master's degree-granting criminal justice program, according to a study in the latest issue of the Journal of Criminal Justice Education.

For the study, the authors examined the number of grants awarded, the total number of granting agencies from which funding was obtained and the total number of grant dollars awarded to individuals and departments at master's and doctoral-level programs in criminal justice nationwide from 1997 to 2007.

The UAB Department of Justice Sciences won 10 grants for research studies between 1997 and 2007 from sources that include the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA). The UAB criminal justice research studies included a study to create a domestic terrorism database for the evaluation of government policies and the impact of federal sentencing guidelines. The study was supported with a $1 million grant from the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. In another study, supported by a $118,000 U.S. Department of Justice grant, UAB criminologists examined identity thieves' strategies and perceptions of risk, which could someday lead to the development of behavioral programs designed to reduce identity theft.

The UAB Department of Justice Sciences offers undergraduate and master's degrees in criminal justice, a master's in forensic science and a graduate-level computer forensics certificate program. For more information about the UAB Department of Justice Sciences, visit the Web site at www.uab.edu/cas/justice-sciences.