Skip to main content
Metro State University (Home)

Criminal Justice and Public Safety Leadership (MS)

College of Community Studies and Public Affairs / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Graduate degree / Master of Science

About The Program

Lead With More Than Instinct

You have earned your rank. You know your community. You've managed crises, led investigations, navigated politics, and made hard calls under pressure. But the job keeps changing—and the leaders who thrive are the ones who can back their instincts with evidence, build lasting institutional change, and bring people with them.

That’s what this degree is for.

A Graduate Degree Built Around Your Career

Metro State’s MS in Criminal Justice and Public Safety Leadership is a 32-credit graduate program designed for working professionals in law enforcement, corrections, courts, and public safety leadership. You won't step away from your career to earn this degree. You'll bring your career into it.

The curriculum draws on criminology, organizational behavior, public policy, and applied research methods. Every course is grounded in real leadership challenges: recruitment and retention, community trust, budget pressures, oversight, policy reform. You will learn to think like a researcher, lead like an executive, and communicate across the table — whether you’re sitting across from a city council or a community in crisis.

Two Pathways. One Degree.

We know that public safety professionals don’t all arrive at graduate school the same way. Metro State offers two distinct pathways to the MS — each rigorous, each flexible, and each designed to meet you where you are.

Pathway One: The MCPA Executive Leadership College Partnership

Already enrolled in — or a graduate of — the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association Executive Leadership College? You may have already earned a third of your degree.

Metro State and the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association have built something rare: a genuine credit pathway that respects the work you’ve already done.

Metro State faculty from the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice reviewed and formally approved the MCPA Staff and Command College curriculum for graduate credit. Students who complete the Executive Leadership College program earn 12 graduate credits — posted directly to a Metro State transcript — and can apply those credits toward the 32-credit MS once admitted to the degree program.

Those 12 credits carry no tuition or fees through this partnership pathway.

That means you enter the MS with 12 credits already banked, at no additional cost, and a clear path to completing the remaining 20 credits while continuing to work.

This partnership is designed for exactly the kind of leader this program serves: experienced, time-constrained, and serious about professional growth.

What you receive through the MCPA pathway:

  • 12 graduate credits awarded to your Metro State University transcript
  • No tuition or fees for those 12 credits
  • A streamlined path to the full MS in Criminal Justice and Public Safety Leadership

Pathway Two: The Interdisciplinary Leadership Track

Public safety doesn’t operate in isolation — and neither should its leaders. Metro State's second pathway allows students to complete their elective credits through select courses offered by our partner programs in Public and Nonprofit Leadership.

Depending on your professional goals, you might draw coursework from:

  • Master of Advocacy and Political Leadership (MAPL) — for leaders navigating legislation, public campaigns, and civic engagement
  • Master of Public and Nonprofit Administration (MPNA) — for those managing budgets, personnel, and public institutions
  • Master of Nonprofit Leadership and Management (MNLM) — for leaders working at the intersection of public safety and community-based organizations

This pathway is for the criminal justice leader who knows that the problems in front of them — poverty, mental illness, housing, addiction — don’t stop at the agency door. The interdisciplinary track builds the cross-sector fluency that modern public safety leadership demands.

Why Metro State

Metro State University is Minnesota’s public, urban university — rooted in the Twin Cities and committed to professional education that works in the real world. The School of Criminology and Criminal Justice brings together faculty who publish peer-reviewed research and have worked in the field. They know the difference between a theory that looks good on paper and one that holds up on the job. This is an affordable, accredited, public university degree.

Student Outcomes

Upon successful completion of the Master of Science in Criminal Justice and Public Safety Leadership, graduates will be able to:

  1. Evaluate empirical research and apply evidence-based frameworks to diagnose organizational problems, develop data-informed solutions, and measure outcomes within criminal justice and public safety settings.
  2. Design and execute applied research relevant to a professional context, including formulating a research question, selecting appropriate methods, collecting and analyzing data, and communicating findings to both scholarly and practitioner audiences.
  3. Analyze the development, implementation, and impact of criminal justice policy at the local, state, and federal levels, integrating legal, political, fiscal, and community considerations into policy recommendations.
  4. Demonstrate advanced competency in organizational leadership, including strategic planning, personnel management, and institutional change, drawing on theory and research in public administration and organizational behavior.
  5. Develop and assess ethical frameworks for decision making in high-stakes public safety environments, applying professional standards to complex scenarios involving accountability, use of force, civil rights, and community harm.
  6. Construct and communicate a coherent leadership philosophy grounded in scholarship, professional experience, and an understanding of the social, historical, and political contexts shaping contemporary criminal justice.
  7. Engage diverse stakeholders, including community members, elected officials, oversight bodies, and partner agencies, through clear, credible, and actionable communication.

Who Should Apply

This program is built for:

  • MCPA Executive Leadership College graduates ready to complete a graduate degree
  • Chiefs of Police, Deputy/Assistant Chiefs, Inspectors/Commanders, Captains, Lieutenants, Sergeants
  • Corrections and probation administrators
  • Court and public safety administrators
  • Mid-career professionals preparing for executive leadership roles

Applicants must hold a baccalaureate degree from a regionally accredited institution. Professional experience in criminal justice, public safety, or a related field is strongly preferred.

Ready to take the next step?

Whether you’re exploring the MCPA partnership or building your own path through our interdisciplinary track, we want to talk. Contact us at Criminology.Advising@metrostate.edu.

How to enroll

Program eligibility requirements

To be eligible for admission, all candidates must have:

Application instructions

Metro State University is participating in the common application for graduate programs (GradCAS). Applications are only accepted via the CAS website.

Application Deadlines

Fall deadline: August 1
Spring deadline: December 1
Summer deadline: April 1

CAS steps

  1. Select the term for which you are seeking admission (below), and navigate to the CAS website. Open applications include:
  2. Create or log in to your account and select the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Leadership (MS) program.
  3. Carefully review all instructions and complete all four sections of the application.

Specific application requirements for individual programs can be found on each program page in CAS. Carefully read the instructions that appear throughout the application pages. You can only submit your application once. If you need to update information you have submitted, please notify graduate.studies@metrostate.edu

Application fee

A nonrefundable $38 fee is required for each application.
Applications will not be processed until this fee is received.

Active-duty military, veterans, and Metro State alumni are eligible for an application fee waiver. Once your application is complete and ready for submission, please contact graduate.studies@metrostate.edu.

Please note: only one application fee waiver code is provided per applicant.

Courses and Requirements

SKIP TO COURSE REQUIREMENTS
  • Candidates who complete the MCPA Executive Leadership College program will receive 12 elective credits awarded toward the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Leadership MS.
  • Students must remain in satisfactory academic standing to continue in the program.
  • A cumulative grade point average (GPA) of 3.0 is required for graduation.

Criminal Justice and Public Safety Leadership MS (32 credits)

+ Foundation (2 credits)

This course introduces students to writing at the graduate level. Students learn to search, retrieve, evaluate and document sources and prepare papers using writing and citation styles expected in criminal justice graduate courses. Students are also introduced to critical thinking and problem-solving on current issues in the criminal justice system and required to complete writing assignments using these skills.

Full course description for Foundations of Graduate Study and Professional Practice in Criminal Justice

+ Core (15 credits)

Complete any five of the following three credit CJS 600-level courses. Not all courses listed are offered every academic term or cycle. Students should consult the current term schedule and work with their academic advisor to confirm course availability and plan their program of study accordingly.

Students learn to read, understand, and conduct the types of program and policy evaluations that are typically used in criminal justice agencies. At the end of the course, the student will know the vocabulary, concepts, theories, and techniques related to program and policy evaluation well enough to implement their own evaluation projects. The student will participate in both designing and conducting actual program evaluations.

Full course description for Applied Program and Policy Evaluation in Criminal Justice

This course examines different strategies to reduce crime used in communities, families, schools, labor markets, places, law enforcement, and the criminal justice system. These strategies are critically examined in relation to social science theory and what the scientific evidence suggests about the effectiveness of crime prevention and intervention efforts. A key focus is whether communities can reduce violence and ensure the health and security of their residents without depending on police.

Full course description for Reducing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising?

This course takes a systemic, collaborative, and people-centered approach to justice, combining evidence-based and community stakeholder-driven practices that foster inclusion and authentic community building. This course raises awareness around mass incarceration, unfair sentencing practices, police violence, and the disparate impact of current justice practices across different communities. With an emphasis on community action, healing, and accountability, this course empowers students to think differently about public safety and create system change.

Full course description for Justice Transformation and Community Healing

This course focuses on the problems criminal justice professionals encounter in their duties as managers/supervisors regarding managing of human resources with a focus on: policy development; labor/management issues; labor laws; budgeting issues and concerns; supervising the difficult employee; internal discipline, recruitment, training, and retention issues; and working with minority issues and cultural differences.

Full course description for Public Safety Workforce Leadership and Management

The course explores past and future trends, challenges, and advancements in criminal justice/law enforcement leadership. Focusing on the stories and lessons learned by leaders throughout the private, nonprofit, and public sectors; while exploring issues of ethics, diversity, and changing demographics of leadership within the criminal justice/law enforcement profession.

Full course description for Leadership, Innovation, and Technology in Criminal Justice

This course focuses on justice system responses to victim and offender special populations, including: women; children; the elderly; LGBTQ+ people; immigrants; and people with disabilities (physical, developmental, behavioral, and sensory). This course teaches critical incident stress management for first responders and crisis intervention, de-escalation, and other skills necessary to respond to the signs of mental illness and substance use.

Full course description for Crisis Response, Mental Illness, and Working with Special Populations

This seminar offers in-depth study of selected topics in criminal justice and public safety. Specific content varies by offering and may focus on emerging issues, specialized areas of practice, policy challenges, or theoretical developments. The course emphasizes critical engagement with contemporary issues relevant to criminal justice and public safety.

Full course description for Special Topics in Criminal Justice and Public Safety

+ Capstone (3 credits)

This course serves as the culminating experience for the Master of Science in Criminal Justice and Public Safety Leadership. Students integrate theory, research methods, and professional practice to complete a substantial, applied capstone project addressing a real-world public safety problem. Projects may take multiple forms¿such as applied research, curriculum development and teaching, program or policy analysis, strategic planning, or practice-based interventions¿and are developed in consultation with faculty and, where appropriate, external partners. Emphasis is placed on analytical rigor, professional standards, and the translation of evidence into actionable recommendations for criminal justice and public safety leadership.

Full course description for Criminal Justice and Public Safety Capstone

+ Directed Electives (12 credits)

The Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association (MCPA) Executive Leadership College completes this requirement. All other students must choose from this list:

Student-designed independent studies give Metro State students the opportunity to plan their own study. This type of independent learning strategy can be useful because it allows students: to study a subject in more depth, at a more advanced level; to pursue a unique project that requires specialized study; to draw together several knowledge areas or interests into a specialized study; to test independent learning capabilities and skills; or to use special learning resources in the community, taking advantage of community education opportunities which, in themselves, would not yield a full college competence. Students should contact their academic advisor for more information.

Full course description for CJS 660I Student Designed Ind Study

This course familiarizes students with the historical and contemporary place of government institutions in the United States and the State of Minnesota. It provides an intellectual perspective on public administration that traces major theories associated with the field and the political, economic and social context within which they developed. The unique challenges of leadership and management in the public sector is also addressed.

Full course description for Public Administration Foundations

Policy analyses in the public sphere differs from the private because of the political context and process. Core of the course is understanding the importance of how a problem is defined and then comparing and evaluating alternative approaches to solve public problems. This course will help students to better understand, design, implement and evaluate policies and programs. Various forms of analyses are used including economic, quantitative, political and historical.

Full course description for Public Policy Analysis

This course explores how the operations and services of public agencies are financially managed and paid for. Students examine taxes and government budgets from legal, economic and political perspectives. The main taxes of the American system-income, sales and property-as well as fees, intergovernmental transfers, economic development, education finance and public borrowing are covered on the tax side. On the spending side, students prepare and implement mock budgets. Current topics in government spending and taxation are also examined.

Full course description for Public Finance

This course introduces MPNA, MPA, MNLM, and other Metro State graduate students who are interested in public service to the theories and best practices of leading and managing public service organizations. This course will adapt the study of leadership and organizations to the unique obligations, functions, processes, and public values and societal outcomes that govern the decisions of the government and nonprofit sectors. Public service is the result of the work of local, state, and federal government; regional compacts or special districts; tribal governments; nonprofit organizations and social enterprises; partnerships between government and business; and international linkages (that are necessary for solving global problems likes pandemics and climate change) . The public service perspective is evident when government and civil society collectively marshal efforts to respond to human-made (9-11 Terrorist Attacks, Aurora, Colorado Theater Mass Shooting) and natural (Hurricane…

Full course description for Leading Public Service Organizations

Strategic human resource management includes the following major components, with specific attention to the unique environment and challenges facing public and nonprofit professionals: a strategic perspective that connects HR management with the organization's mission; labor relations; compensation; benefits management; recruitment and selection; performance management; and an additional focus on organizational/program/project management to align the organization's human resources with overall organization goals and priorities.

Full course description for Strategic Human Resources Management: Public and Nonprofit

Public Ethics and the Common Good brings together into one course the four essential elements of ethical organizational management: development of a code of ethics and standards of professional conduct, instituting systematic training and enforcement on ethical expectations, ethical leadership to incorporate these expectations into the lived culture of the organization, and commitment to corporate responsibility for the common good that meets the demands of procedural and distributive justice.

Full course description for Public Ethics and the Common Good

MAPL 661 is an elective course in the Advocacy and Political Leadership (MAPL) track within the Master of Public and Nonprofit Administration (MPNA) Program. The course will develop a shared, rudimentary ethical code for participation in advocacy and political life. The course begins by examining classical ethical theory, from Plato on. Then we examine ethics in government, looking at the systems established to insure not that actors on the governmental stage do the right thing, but rather that they avoid the appearance of a conflict. The exercise in developing the code will combine these two ethical systems, one normative and the other procedural, in a single proscriptive document. The codes development will be informed by reading a few of the major political/ethical theorists, by dialogue with some of Minnesotas leading political/advocacy figures, and by case studies.

Full course description for Ethics in Policy, Politics and Advocacy

MAPL 668 is an elective course in the Master of Advocacy and Political Leadership (MAPL) Program. This course will provide students with in-depth insight into timely political advocacy issues of the day. Students will become proficient in the context, the arguments, and the specific techniques used to advocate for and against these specific issues.

Full course description for Topics in Advocacy