The Journal of Criminal Justice Education has ranked the faculty of WSU's Criminal Justice Program among the best in the nation when it comes to publication productivity.
A study that appeared in the November 2007 issue placed WSU fourth among criminal justice/criminology programs based on per-faculty average publication output. The index took into account the total number of publications and weighted them according to journal prestige.
The overall publication output of WSU's relatively small criminal justice faculty rivals that of programs 2 to 3 times larger, including AAU institutions such as the University of Nebraska, Indiana University, and Rutgers University.
The same journal also published a study this fall that assessed the publication productivity of female Ph.D. graduates in criminal justice/criminology. In the article, a small group of "publication stars" were identified, including Leana Bouffard (assistant professor).
Bouffard earned her doctoral degree from the University of Maryland in 2001. Her research interests include the relationship between military service and criminal behavior, violence against women, and police behavior. She has published articles in such journals as Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Journal of Crime and Justice, and International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology.
In March 2007, Travis Pratt (associate professor and director) and Jeff Bouffard (assistant professor) were recognized as outstanding in the field. Both were both noted to be in the top 6% of all post-1995 criminology/criminal justice Ph.D. graduates in the nation for producing peer-reviewed research in leading journals, and Pratt was identified as one the 50 most-cited scholars for current trends relating to his work on individual- and community-level sources of criminal behavior.
The Chronicle, College of Liberal Arts, Washington State University