Introduction to Criminal Justice: Practice and Process

"This text provides a clear and interesting format through which students may understand often difficult criminal justice concepts. Peak provides students with an interactive format for learning, complete with up-to-date supplementary information. The text is concise, informative and interesting."

―Tameka Samuels-Jones, University of Florida

Introduction to Criminal Justice: Practice and Process, Second Edition uses a proven problem-based learning approach to enhance the critical thinking and analytic skills of students. Best-selling authors Kenneth J. Peak and Pamela M. Everett explain the importance of criminal justice and show students how key trends, emerging issues, historical background, and practical lessons apply to their future careers. Students learn core topics―policing, corrections, criminal behavior, criminal law, and courts―as well as special topics such as ethics, juvenile justice, terrorism, and the changing war on drugs, while learning how to solve problems they are likely to face as criminal justice practitioners. Packed with new examples and drawing on the authors’ years of experience in the field, this student-friendly book offers a palpable, real-world flavor typically missing in other texts for the course.

Interactive eBook also available―FREE when bundled with the new edition!

Your students save when you bundle the new edition Introduction to Criminal Justice: Practice and Process with the interactive eBook. Use bundle ISBN 978-1-5063-3927-6

Take a tour of the Interactive eBook

Kenneth J. Peak, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus and former chairman of the criminal justice department at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he was named “Teacher of the Year” by the UNR Honor Society and also served as acting director of public safety. He has authored or coauthored more than 40 books on community policing, introductory policing, justice administration, introduction to criminal justice, women in law enforcement, and police supervision and management; two historical books (on bootlegging and temperance); and more than 60 journal articles and additional book chapters on a wide range of justice-related subjects. He has served as chairman of the Police Section, Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences and a past president of the Western Association of Criminal Justice. Prior to coming to UNR, Dr. Peak held positions as a municipal police officer, nine-county criminal justice planner; and director of a four-state Technical Assistance Institute. He also served twice as a chief of university police and as an assistant professor at Wichita State University (five years). He received two gubernatorial appointments to statewide criminal justice committees while in Kansas and holds a doctorate from the University of Kansas.

Pamela Everett, J.D. is an attorney, Assistant Teaching Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Reno, and the author of Little Shoes: The Sensational Depression-Era Murders That Became My Family’s Secret (2017), a New-York Times Book Review Summer 2017 Must Read, about an historic wrongful convictions case. 

She earned her undergraduate degree in Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Reno and her Juris Doctorate from the University of San Diego, where she wrote for the University of San Diego Law Review.  She was a contributing features and opinion columnist on legal and justice system issues for the Omaha World-Herald and the Wayne Stater from 2009-2014.  She was also a Contributing Author and Assistant Editor for SAGE Publications’ Encyclopedia of Criminal Justice (2013).  

She has served as a volunteer attorney for the California Innocence Project for the last decade, and among other topics, she teaches a popular course at the University of Nevada, Reno on Wrongful Convictions.  Her other teaching focuses on the mentally ill in the criminal justice system, the courts, and criminal law.