Criminal Justice at TJC

Well, the 2025-2026 academic year is now over. This Spring's graduates were once again some of the best kids you will ever want to have met. Each and every one of them with tremendous potential to serve in the Criminal Justice and the Paralegal fields!

Congratulations to this spring's graduates earning 49 degrees and 34 certificates of proficiency!

(Photos are just a portion of the actual number of students who graduated.)

Back on April 15th, our 17th Criminalistics III students went through the paces of working their final mock crime scene for the year. They worked as a team, as they have in the past, to properly document the scene, collect and process various type of physical evidence. The skills that they practiced were skills that they have learned over the past three semesters and include: crime scene photography, basic diagramming, evidence collection and packaging, latent fingerprinting, casting of impression evidence, bloodstain examination and identification, body fluids identification, and basic blood spatter analysis.

Following their exercise and completion of their written reports and related documentation, each student was then put through a mock courtroom exercise where they were presented as a witness for the prosecution, followed by some intense cross-examination by the defense.

Another great cohort of students who have learned and also bonded with their team/classmates! Great job # 17!

(Special acknowledgement to Brooklynn Essary, our student lab assistant for capturing these photographs.)

More photos from CJSA’s Spring Field Trip to Oklahoma.

More photos from CJSA’s visit to the Oklahoma City Bombing Museum and Memorial on Saturday, April 25th, 2926.

The last day of CJSA’s annual Spring Educational Field Trip was a visit to the site of the tragic Oklahoma City Bombing where 183 people were murdered after a large truck bomb exploded at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19th, 1995.

The visit included both the outdoor memorial and the museum complex.

Part of the great thing about CJSA and the vibrant student life of TJC, includes enjoying meals and fellowship with each other. Following the visit to the Cherokee Nation, CJSA enjoyed a great time at Toby Keith’s restaurant in Oklahoma City ( CJSA’s home base while in Oklahoma).

Our 2nd half posting from CJSA’s visit to the headquarters of the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

On the 2nd day of CJSA’s Spring 2026 educational field trip, the group traveled into the Cherokee Nation to Tahlequah, Oklahoma where they were given guided tours of the historic Cherokee Nation’s original Supreme Court building, their territorial prison, and beautiful and informative Cherokee History Museum.

CJSA members also were able to participate in a traditional Cherokee “stick ball” game along with Tahlequah’s famous “Red Fern Festival,” in honor of the book’s author, Wilson Rawls’s hometown.

Today, the Criminal Justice Students Association (CJSA) had the tremendous opportunity to hear from the Criminal District Attorney for Smith County, the Honorable Jacob Putman, who talked to the students about the important role of his office and his prosecutorial staff.