“…According to Clear (2001), critics argued that "criminal justice was based on weak empirical and theoretical foundations, and that it had nothing to offer which was not already available through some established discipline, principally sociology and the law" (p. 710). To add to this argument of weak empirical and theoretical foundations, Hemmens (2008) argued that, pedagogically, criminology and criminal justice has been "largely dismissed variously as nothing more than police training, too practitioner-oriented, not academic enough, co-opted by government agencies with grant monies, and a refuge for low-achieving students" (p. 28). Thus, criminal justice has endured many criticisms in its emergence as an academic area.…”