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CRM 331 Corrections    

A copy of the Syllabus is here. 

For all of you interested in what we can do with juveniles and youth, CHECK OUT: Less Hype, More Help: Reducing Juvenile Crime, What Works--and What Doesn’t

For students interested in the death penalty, check out the Death Penalty Information Center. This site has rightly won many award for collecting and presenting important information about capital punishment. There's information on problems of innocence (64% of American favor a moratorium on executions because of this problem), new reports (states that have the death penalty have higher crime rates than states without it), information about how the candidates stand on capital punishment and much more. Check out the death penalty section of the website for my Criminal Justice Ethics book; there's also some info on televising executions

Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America

On 9/28, when talking about supervision in women's prisons, I mentioned that a female attorney was concerned about the X-Ray scan that she was subjected to (and whether copies of it were being saved to a disk). If you're interested in an image of what people can see with some types of scanners, check out the image here. I mentioned that there were an increasing number of sites about women in prison, many of them porn sites and others, such as womenbehindbars.com, that encourage correspondence and romance with female inmates. (Notice in their disclaimer about the accuracy of statements.)

I'm making arrangements for people to come in and talk about their jobs and careers in the corrections field. I also have a webpage on career information. Also, click on the stopviolence graphic in the upper right hand corner and go to the School Violence section for information about youth violence and how to deal with it. 

If you liked the prison history material, including the Race Hoss interview & the prison work songs, click on the link for 'more information' in the week 3 row. The speaker on 9/21 was Marlyce Nuzum. If she got you interested in restorative justice, there's more information about it available through StopViolence.com. Also worth a look: International Conference on Penal Abolition.

Required Reading and Exercises 

week 1

Introduction & Greeting

week 2

9/7

Welch Ch 1 - 3

Paper based on ‘What Every American Should Know About Criminal Justice’. Read through it and print off a copy – we will be using this document at several points during the semester so make sure you have a copy.

Write a 2 page paper addressing (1) what you thought were the best points they made (2) what were some point of information you did not know or had not really thought about before, and (3) what questions or disagreements do you have with what they say.

week 3 

9/14

Welch Ch  4 - 5 Library of Congress - American Memory Project Click here for more information.

Updated - new links about prison history, the Race Hoss book and prison work songs

week 4 

9/21

Welch Ch 6 – 7 For the assignment about exploring prison survival guides, click here
week 5

9/28 

Welch Ch 8 & 10

Go to either (1) “Not Part of My Sentence” from Amnesty International  or (2) “Nowhere to Hide: Retaliation Against Women in Michigan State Prisons.

Write a 2 page paper that summarizes the main issues and evidence presented in either report. Remember to provide a full citation to the article you read.
week 6 

10/5

Welch Ch 11

Recommended:

Capital Punishment in 1998 (click on the 'Acrobat file' for the complete report)

The information needed to complete this assignment can be found on the internet at National Criminal Justice Reference Service. Click on the ‘Corrections’ section, then ‘Documents’, then look for ‘Prisoners in 1999’ (not midyear 1999). You will need to open up the .pdf/ Adobe Acrobat version to complete this assignment because the other versions do not have all the tables. Please be careful to distinguish between the number, a rate and percents – make sure you provide the information requested by the questions in the worksheet
week 7

10/12 

Welch Ch 12 - 13

Prison Rape. Go to Stop Prison Rape. Find the reports containing statistics on how frequently prison rape occurs.

Write a 2 page paper reviewing the (1) frequency of rape in prison and jail, and (2) the profile of the most likely victim. Please make sure to provide a citation to the work you review in this paper.

week 8

10/19 

Welch 14 & review for test

ELECTION & POLICY PAPER DUE

Click here for more details

week 9

10/26 

Test on Welch

Test will be a take home one you'll have a week to do. I'll hand it out at the end of class & post it here Friday morning. 
week 10

11/2

Welch Ch 15, Dyer Intro & ch 1

Test due, then we will start discussing these chapters. No Internet assignment. 

week 11

11/9

Dyer, Ch 2 - 3

Go to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service then click on ‘Corrections’ then ‘Documents’ (or ‘Reports’). Scroll through the list of reports and find one that is at least 10 pages long and of interest to you.

Write a 2 page summary of a piece of research. Be sure to include what research question or questions are addressed, what if any data was gathered (and how), what the findings were, and what if any policy suggestions are advocated. Be sure to include the name of the report, the date and the NCJ number.

OPTION 2: Write a 2 page paper about Restorative Justice based on an exploration of at least two internet sites in the Restorative Justice section of StopViolence.com

week 12

11/16 

Dyer Ch 4 – 5 Explore the private prison resources in the Crime Pays/ Private Prisons section of Paulsjusticepage and find 2 – 3 websites that describe why many prison guards oppose private prisons. Summarize their concerns and provide appropriate citations to the information in your paper.
week 13

11/23

No class -- Thanksgiving

week 14

11/30

Dyer 6 - 9

From your own use of the internet, find 3 websites that propose helpful solutions to problems faced by prisons and/or our sentencing policies. List the full address of the website, the name of the site or organization. In a paragraph, describe the ideas presented in the website about reform.

You can only include a website once, even though it may have several sections (cover these in your description and do not list the sections of the website as different websites). Do not include any sites referenced in this syllabus, on paulsjusticepage.com or stopviolence.com. Bring in enough copies of this assignment to share with everyone in class.
Week 15

12/7

Dyer 10 – 11 & Review for test no assignment due

FINAL EXAM: 12/14 4:00 - 6:40 PH 203

 

     

 

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