Southeast Missouri State University's Department of Criminal Justice and Sociology will host its annual Criminal Justice Day from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday, March 4, at the University Center with keynote speakers at 3:30 p.m. at the Academic Hall Auditorium.

Criminal Justice Day is held every spring with the goal to give students the opportunity to speak with representatives from agencies from across the country.

Laura Krieger, an instructor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Sociology, has overseen the organization of the event for the past two years.

Criminal Justice day has seen greater success each year as a greater number of organizations are traveling further distances to be a part of the job fair.

"We've seen more and more agencies come from across the country," Krieger said on Criminal Justice days.

Students will have the opportunity to visit with agency representatives from law enforcement, corrections, conservation, private security, the division of youth and family services, rehabilitation, social work and military.

Krieger said it is still early in the process to confirm what organizations will have booths at the fair, but she anticipates there to be 35-50 booths open for the roughly 350 students expected to be in attendance throughout the time of the fair.

Students with majors or minors in political science are also encouraged to attend as representatives from law schools are often in attendance. The job fair is not only for current Southeast students. High school or junior college students interested in a career in criminal justice are encouraged to come and explore the different fields that may be of interest to them.

The two keynote speakers are Arkansas state senator David Burnett and prosecuting attorney Scott Ellington. In 1993 Jason Baldwin, Jessie Misskelley Jr. and Damien Echols were arrested for the murders of three 8-year-old boys and released after 17 years in prison. The teenagers became known as the West Memphis three. Burnett was the original trial judge for the west Memphis three cases, and Ellington was the prosecuting attorney during the retrials. Listening to both at the keynote will give anyone perspectives on both sides of the famous cases.

Burnett served as the elected prosecuting attorney for the Second Judicial Circuit of Arkansas for two terms from 1974 to 1982 and was circuit judge for the six-county circuit from 1983 to 2009.

After retiring from the bench, Burnett was elected to the Arkansas state senate in 2010 to represent Senate District 22 where he is currently positioned.

Ellington is currently the district prosecuting attorney for the Second Judicial District of Arkansas. He was elected as District Prosecuting Attorney in 2010, and took office in January 2011. Preceding his current position, Ellington was deputy prosecuting attorney beginning in 2007 and prior to that worked for 15 years in private practice.

All students, even those who don't have criminal justice as a major or minor, are encouraged to attend the keynote speeches.

"All the agencies there, you get a lot of information from a lot of different aspects so you can maybe find somebody there that does something else that may grab your interest," Criminal Justice Association president Chad Smith said.

Criminal Justice Association will have a booth at this year's event with a poster of pictures of the trips they went on and guest speakers that have attended meetings to discuss some of the aspects of criminal justice.

"We haven't had a booth, to my knowledge before," Smith said. "We're planning on making a poster kind of a collage of pictures of stuff we did in the fall."

The association plans to show students the activities Criminal Justice Association has done this past fall in hopes of increasing its members.