: Is there a Criminal Justice Major at Drexel?

D’Ovidio: Yes. Dr. Julia Hall is actually the program coordinator for our criminal justice program. I work with Dr. Hall closely. We have two faculty members designated specifically for Criminal Justice. Then we have other faculty members from the university that teach for us. We have someone from IST that teaches one of our computer crime courses. We have folks from psychology that teach for us. And then we work with a lot of adjuncts. We have a judge from the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas that teaches for us. We have a retired chief of the Philadelphia police department’s detective bureau that teaches for us. We have the Commissioner of Corrections that teaches for us, so Dr. Hall has identified experts in the field that are bringing their expertise and their experience to the classroom for our students. And then often, for instance, Judge Hughes, who is from the common pleas court, will make available internship or co-op opportunities in her court because of her affiliation. She gets the opportunity to know the students on a first name basis and know their capabilities. It’s great for her in deciding who to take to work in her courtroom.

: And lastly, has 9/11 had any effect on the field? Any perspective you’ve gained, how it’s changed you as being part of this field?

D’Ovidio: It’s definitely changed from a procedural perspective in terms of the capabilities of law enforcement and getting access to communication whether it’s telephone based communication, stored communication, computer-innovated communication: email, chat rooms, website viewing history, things like that. it has increased the capability of the law enforcement community to investigate these types of cases. And sort of has closed some of the loopholes that have, in the past, really prevented law enforcement from doing their job effectively in terms of these types of investigations. But, if it’s not checked, if these increasing powers that procedural capabilities of law enforcement now have are not actually looked over carefully, you do run the risk of some privacy invasion. Most of the colleagues I’ve worked with in law enforcement couldn’t agree more. They see it from both sides, you know, both concerns.

9/11, from my perspective, has caused me to look at terrorism in a different light. And looking at it from a perspective that the terrorist group no longer has a centralized authority. I think [terrorism] has forced a lot of criminal justice practitioners, and criminal justice researchers and academics, to really look into it. So, if you did work in the past in fraud, and that was your primary area of research, you can’t be but forced to look at the literature that’s now becoming available, published in journals and books; we’re all dealing with them because now we know that terrorist groups are using traditional fraud techniques that maybe in the past they weren’t, as fundraising opportunities. So, terrorist groups in my field, there’s often talk of terrorist organizations being behind large scale identity theft because of the potential for not only getting IDs to get people into the country, but the probability of these types of things. It clearly has touched a lot of different areas: the corrections field, etc. You know, what do we do now with these individuals that are now being brought to the attention of the corrections system? I think that you can’t be forced because the literature, and not only in scholarly journals, text books and trade books are dealing with the issues. So, those people that keep current with the literature are going to account.

: Do you have any predictions for the field? Where is it going? Things like that.

D’Ovidio: I think that, at Drexel’s program, specifically, we are in a good position here to be and continue to be leaders in the field because of our strong ties with the university historically and with sciences and technology. And we’ve really identified these focus areas that we believe are pertinent to a solid education for those people that are going to work in criminal justice because we are going to see an increase in computer related crimes. And crime is going to be, computers are going to be, involved not only with crime, but also a strong component within running the criminal justice system, not only from how we run our prisons and economize or make the running of prisons more efficient, but also how we collect data and use data for purposes of crime analysis to place our resources appropriately.

Drexel continues to be in a great position to be a leader in education, especially in criminal justice. And we have a dynamite leader of our program in Dr. Hall; she continues to be enthusiastic, and working hard at growing the program. This year we gained about 32 students, not counting transfer students. And when you’re talking about a program that has two full-time faculty assigned to it, that’s great. Our resources are limited in terms of the time we can spend toward program development. I just think it’s a dynamite program and it’s a great time to be in the field, especially those that are interested in forensic science and computer crime and computer forensics.