About our authors
Dr. James A. Fagin has taught in the criminal justice field since 1973. He has taught undergraduate and graduate classes and has taught criminal justice classes for military officers at Command and General Staff College. Dr. Fagin has authored more than a dozen criminal justice texts. One of the things that has helped Dr. Fagin in producing an introductory textbook is the fact that he has had the opportunity to be associated with the entire spectrum of the criminal justice system during his career.
In addition to his academic career, Dr. Fagin has been a professional consultant to local and federal law enforcement agencies, the state courts, and local, state and federal correctional facilities. In addition to teaching university classes, Dr. Fagin has taught at police and correctional academies. During his career, he has been a professor of criminal justice studies and Program Director at Lincoln College-Normal (LCN), located in Normal, Illinois; professor and Chair of the Criminal Justice Department at Chaminade University of Honolulu, the oldest and largest criminal justice program in Hawaii; and assistant professor and Director of Outreach Programs at Wichita State University.
In addition to his experience in criminal justice, Jim served as Graduate School Dean at East Stroudsburg University and was Acting President of Kima International Theological College, a three-year college in Kenya, East Africa. Dr. James Fagin is a pioneer in criminal justice education and has been involved in innovative criminal justice education programs for over four decades. He developed one of the early models of statewide delivery of criminal justice undergraduate and graduate degrees for Kansas. During the developing years of criminal justice education, Jim worked as a consultant and instructor for the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) to develop model criminal justice curriculum in research, administration and planning to promote quality nationwide education in criminal justice. Under the oversight of LEAA, these model curriculums were developed by an elite team of practitioners and educators and were field-tested throughout the United States.
Dr. Fagin wrote some of the classical literature on computer crime, police bargaining and unions, presidential candidate security, domestic disturbance resolution and hostage negotiations. His articles on international terrorism have been translated and published in major criminal justice journals in Japan. He received the American Society of Criminal Justice Hawai'i chapter's award for outstanding contributions to Public Administration for his achievement in establishing a master's degree in public administration at Chaminade University of Honolulu. He has received numerous other awards for contributions to hotel security, forensic investigations and excellence in teaching. These works emerged from active involvement with federal, state and local criminal justice agencies.
Jim was a commissioned deputy sheriff training officer and polygraph examiner for the Wyandotte County (Kansas) Sheriff's Department and a Commissioned Reserve Police Officer in the Kansas City (Kansas) Police Department. He served on the Kansas Victims' Rights Commission to help establish the charter victims' rights legislation for the state. He assisted in implementing the first domestic disturbance response policy for the Wichita, Kansas, Police Department. He received his BA degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and his MS and PhD from Southern Illinois University–Carbondale, Illinois.
Textbooks such as this are an ongoing work in progress, and the author welcomes communication and correspondence about his work. You can contact Dr. Fagin by email.
Dr. Michele P. Bratina has taught in the criminal justice field since 2005, teaching students in both undergraduate and graduate classes. Dr. Bratina has authored a diverse mix of publications, including book chapters, texts, encyclopedia entries and journal articles on topics such as human trafficking, psychiatric crisis intervention training with police, and the aging correctional population. Her exposure to multiple systems of care during her career has helped her to produce materials and to update existing materials as co-author of an introductory textbook.
In addition to teaching university classes, Dr. Bratina has taught part of a curriculum for police crisis intervention in south central Pennsylvania. During her career, she has been an instructor of record for the criminal justice program at the University of Little Rock, Arkansas, and in the criminology department at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania; Program Director of the criminal justice and justice studies programs at Keiser University in West Palm Beach; and an Assistant Professor at Shippensburg University and Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at West Chester University, both located in Pennsylvania.
In addition to her experience in academia, Dr. Bratina has worked for the Florida Department of Children and Families, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Program Office, as a Coordinator of Forensic and Children's Mental Health. As a result of this experience, she has been a professional consultant for local and county-level agencies, pursuing data analysis and continued grant-funded programs pertaining to the management and care of justice-involved persons with mental illness and histories of trauma and addiction. Dr. Bratina has expertise in Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training programs and has served as a consultant on several steering committees at various stages of program development and assessment.
She received the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) SAGE Junior Faculty Professional Development Teaching Award multiple times for significant promise as a teacher and is a recipient of the Northeastern Association of Criminal Justice Sciences (NEACJS) Founders Award in 2021. Dr. Bratina is currently serving as Region 1 Trustee for ACJS, and has previously served as Second Vice President, Vice President and President for the NEACJS. She has received other awards for excellence in mentoring, teaching and service contributions, including faculty of the year and an award for a human trafficking awareness event she directed at Shippensburg University.
Additionally, she has been awarded several scholarships and grants by the College of Business and Public Management and Provost's Office at West Chester University for her research and scholarship endeavors. Dr. Bratina received her BS (Applied Behavioral Science) from the Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg, her MA (Criminal Justice) at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock and her PhD from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She also completed one year of study at the William H. Bowen School of Law, also in Little Rock, Arkansas. You can contact Dr. Bratina by email.
