Public Education and Purpose: How Criminal Justice Interactions Shape Citizens

While schools are designed to teach civic responsibility and democratic values, the criminal justice system is rarely recognized for its educational role. Yet for tens of millions of Americans—especially those from racially marginalized communities—policing, adjudication, and incarceration have become powerful civic teachers. 

Dr. Benjamin Justice, a Distinguished Professor at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, studies the two systems that stand out in shaping how people understand their place in society: public education and criminal justice. 

“Much of what people learn about legal legitimacy comes from their personal experiences with legal authorities,” Dr. Justice says. “It’s vital that those experiences reinforce democratic values and trust in the law. Without that trust, our legal system crumbles, and we lose our rights, our freedom, and our dignity.”

The criminal justice system acts like an unofficial form of education. One that sends powerful messages about who belongs and who doesn’t.

While schools are meant to teach kids how to be engaged citizens, the opposite is often true for the justice system. These experiences shape how young people see fairness and authority in their society.

Dr. Justice found his place in society as a beneficiary of a strong public education and parents who emphasized reading, sharing ideas, and exploring public educational spaces like museums, monuments, and national parks. His father was a teacher-turned-corrections officer; his mother taught in prison.

“School was only one of many places where I learned to think, regard others, and consider my membership in society,” he says.

Two realizations have driven his work: the first, that “the society we live in is not the one I thought we lived in,” and second, that criminal legal contact functions as a form of civic education. These insights are central to his upcoming book, How Criminal Justice Educates Citizens, which examines what legally innocent people learn about law through their contact with courts, jails, and police—before guilt or innocence is determined.

In any given year, roughly 60 million Americans have involuntary contact with police, Dr. Justice says. What do these experiences teach?

Dr. Justice argues the need to treat the justice system as part of civic education to ensure it supports, rather than harms, people’s ability to participate fully in society.

As a researcher and professor at a state university Dr. Justice takes his role in society seriously. Both his parents went to state teacher colleges. As part of paying forward the education he received, over the past five years, Dr. Justice has chaired 25 dissertation committees.

“The promise of a place like Rutgers is that anybody who has the basic skills to be successful should be able to study anything at as high a level as they could anywhere else,” he says.

He sees it as his duty to meet that demand: to open the door to rigorous doctoral study for students from all walks of life, and to ensure they leave with the skills, mentorship, and vision to shape the world in return.

For him, working at a public university carries a deep sense of responsibility. He recalls when he was an assistant professor at Rutgers in the early 2000s and the primary caregiver for his family. With work and personal obligations piling up, he received the National Academy of Education Spencer postdoctoral fellowship at just the right moment. The award gave him time to advance his research and brought attention to his work. “Without that support, I would likely be doing something else right now,” he says.