Based upon a literature review and interviews with selected criminal justice educators, this critique of criminal justice or police education attempts to explore some of the criticisms being leveled against community college criminal justice education and certain issues and trends related to the field that are becoming evident. To place this discussion in context, some of the problems in criminal justice education and its history are summarized first. Then a review of the literature is presented, which considers the philosophy of curriculum development and points to five basic models of police education, i.e., the general education, the criminal justice education as a liberal art, the criminal justice education as professional education, the fusionist criminal justice education, and the police technology as technical or vocational training models. Next, selected trends in criminal justice education are identified, including: (1) the increasingly academic orientation of criminal justice instructors, who had been primarily retired police officers; (2) the slow withdrawal of vocational training from the college classroom; (3) the increasing emphasis on courses stressing written and oral communications; and (4) the advent of non-traditional approaches using field placement and site visitations. Finally, several successful criminal justice programs are identified, as revealed in interviews with selected criminal justice educators. (AYC)