Page 67 - NCJA Journal_volume1_issue1-final

Abstract

In 2011, the North Carolina Criminal Justice Association (NCCJA) modified its Constitution to

allow one annual conference instead of two. NCCJA also changed the format of the conference

to make the conference more “academic” in nature. Rather than featuring one or two speakers,

the new format invites talks and papers from people all across the state and is thus consistent

with conferences of other academic organizations such as the Southern Criminal Justice

Association (SCJA) and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS). One result of the

change is a much larger conference audience. In this paper, the author analyzes the conference

programs of the North Carolina Criminal Justice Association from 2011-2018 (eight years), to

establish the types of papers that attendees are presenting (and those they are not). The author

also shows the schools and agencies represented by presenters. The purpose of the analysis is to

discover what NCCJA is doing well & what presenters are ignoring and to illustrate the schools

being best served by the new conference format and those that tend not to attend. The paper

provides a snapshot of NCCJA since the switch in a conference format.

Keywords: NCCJA, conference, criminal justice

60