{"id":8172,"date":"2011-09-21T12:30:49","date_gmt":"2011-09-21T19:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stage.headlessnauedu-b6hgdzckfdgxgzhe.westus-01.azurewebsites.net\/?p=8172"},"modified":"2012-12-14T12:47:43","modified_gmt":"2012-12-14T19:47:43","slug":"professor-views-justice-systems-through-global-lens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/professor-views-justice-systems-through-global-lens\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor views justice systems through global lens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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\nCriminal justice professor Cyndi Banks travels the world as an expert in juvenile justice protection and gender issues and specializes in creating high-functioning justice systems\u2014areas of law that many countries are beginning to shape. The slide show above features images from some of her international travels.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

If professors wrote a \u201cWhat I did on my summer break\u201d essay each fall,\u00a0Cyndi Banks\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0composition would read like it was written by an ambassador to the developing world.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because\u00a0Banks<\/a>, chair and professor of criminal justice and criminology at Northern Arizona University, is an expert in juvenile justice protection and gender issues and specializes in helping nations to build high-functioning justice systems\u2014areas of law that many countries are beginning to shape.<\/p>\n

Banks weaves into courses her newfound summer knowledge and collective lessons of the past, giving students a look at international justice systems through more than a textbook.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to juxtapose issues in the U.S. along with examples from wherever I have worked so that the students understand this is what\u2019s happening around the world and they\u2019re not necessarily unconnected,\u201d Banks says.<\/p>\n

Her skills are highly sought after by international organizations like UNICEF, which in July dispatched Banks to Myanmar to work on behalf of the Strengthening Juvenile Justice for Children Project.<\/p>\n

She visited several institutions and met with police, the Supreme Court and the Myanmar Council of Churches to assist in evaluating the conditions and practices in place for juvenile victims and offenders.<\/p>\n

In much of her work\u2014which has included assignments in Iraq, East Timor, Sudan, Bangladesh and Papua, New Guinea\u2014she has seen more victims than offenders in custody of the government, oftentimes because they have nowhere safe to go.<\/p>\n

And while her efforts around the world benefit countless individuals she will never meet, bringing her first-hand experience back to the university furthers her reach as she offers insight her students couldn\u2019t get from a textbook.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe university supports these kinds of international connections because it\u2019s part of the mission,\u201d Banks says. \u201cThey see the benefit of sharing ideas and bringing those back to teach students and provide programs where they can see a bigger world than Flagstaff or Arizona.\u201d<\/p>\n

Banks approaches her work with an interdisciplinary perspective, which is challenging but enjoyable, she says, because it requires more than transplanting a practice or law used in the West into another culture and \u201ctelling them it\u2019s best because it\u2019s our way.\u201d Instead, Banks looks at the larger context including cultural practices, with respect to disciplining children for example, and proposes government policies and systems that protect children\u2019s rights while respecting and working within set cultural values.<\/p>\n

\u201cA solution has to be found within that context or it won\u2019t work,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The demand for her skills as a researcher and evaluator of governmental systems could provide full-time employ, but Banks says her summer ventures along with teaching during the academic year is a great combination.<\/p>\n

\u201cI enjoy being able to help the students hopefully create a situation where they can see there are other perspectives and other ideas and other ways of doing things and that we can all learn and benefit from each other,\u201d Banks says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Criminal justice professor Cyndi Banks travels the world as an expert in juvenile justice protection and gender issues and specializes in creating high-functioning justice systems\u2014areas of law that many countries are beginning to shape. The slide show above features images from some of her international travels. If professors wrote a \u201cWhat I did on my…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty-staff"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}