Soc 260: Criminal Justice

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive. ~Earl Warren

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

his course will focus upon one of the most highly debated and emotionally charged social processes in our contemporary world – American criminal justice, a system which has its own extensive history, organizational logic, and cultural mythology. Since September 11, 2001, the central themes, debates, and issues of criminal justice have assumed center stage in the American social reaction to terror. In a post-9/11 world, we are confronted with the fundamental tensions in public discourse that have always shaped the nature of American justice, including the conflict between public safety and individual rights, the expediency, efficiency, and fairness of American law and its enforcement, and appropriate ways in which to respond to criminal acts. For those of you who plan to work one day in the criminal justice system or one of its rapidly expanding related agencies, you will quickly find your own vision of justice to be transformed in the daily life of your new organization. Whether working in law enforcement, court systems, prisons, probation, parole, victim advocacy, dispute settlement, juvenile justice, etc., individuals face similar obstacles and issues that all professionals encounter. They have to know something about how to organize and work with large groups of people, about how to meet goals and objectives with limited resources, about how to manage conflicts and resolve disputes, and about how to develop strong social skills and create a meaningful workplace. But as criminal justice actors, they also face a number of unique circumstances unlike any other profession. They are perennially in the position of making (in some cases, split-second) decisions about people’s lives, careers, families, and futures. They often face non-voluntary, if not, hostile clients, frustrated co-workers, and a stressful workplace. They invoke and transform the law on a daily basis by way of their own discretion. Finally, they are part of a system that is considered to be the last resort when all other social institutions have failed. Consequently, justice actors engage in a workplace that American citizens persistently imagine and carry expectations about without much attention to its reality.

In this course, we will examine the central institutions and actors which make up the criminal justice process and ask how the daily life of these organizations shapes the nature and quality of American justice. Our goal is to develop the critical thinking skills necessary to help develop answers to these questions. We will do this by reviewing the main components of the American criminal justice system – the police, courts, and penal system – asking how each operates and examining the nature of their interrelationships. In doing so, we will trace the movement of a citizen through the criminal justice process and see what happens as we move from one component to the next. But we want to do more than simply accumulate information about how the system operates. We want to be challenged to think broadly about why the system operates as it does and how its organization and daily practices impact justice. Toward this end, we will structure many of our discussions around three key themes that are considered to be essential for understanding criminal justice in the United States.

Course Themes[1]

Theme 1: Crime Control vs. Civil Liberties in a Democracy

How do efforts to respond to crime potentially conflict with concerns about civil liberties? What factors shape the nature of this tension? What is at stake in balancing this tension in a democracy?

Theme 2: Discretion: Justice as Living and Human

How much individual decisionmaking power do justice officials have and how does this affect the functioning of the system?

Theme 3: The Open System

How do larger forces in society shape how the criminal justice system operates? What is the role of race, class, gender, politics, and the media in criminal justice?

People who love sausage and people who believe in justice

should never watch either of them being made.

~Otto von Bismark

A. Course and Instructor Info:

Course Location and Time: / Prof. Michelle Brown

B. Required Readings:

1)Consequences: Readings in Criminal Justice. Available ONLY at Little Professor Bookstore.

2)A Series of Articles and Chapters on Blackboard. These texts will have a double asterisk (**) next to them in the syllabus.

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

~Alexander Solzhenitsyn

C. Grading Requirements:

Examinations

The course will be made up of three exams. With each exam, you will have the option of taking either an essay-based written exam or a multiple choice format. For optimal performance, choose 1 format and stick with it across the quarter. Each exam will be comprehensive, covering all the material discussed at that point in the course.

Short Writing Assignments

At four points in the quarter, you will be asked to submit a short written assignment (instructions and questions to be given out 1 wk in advance of due date). These will be graded on a 10 point scale and are designed to assist you with some of the most important and/or difficult readings, prepare you for the exams, and promote discussion.

Grade Distribution

Exam 125%

Exam 225%

Final Exam30%

Short Written Ex. (4 @ 5% ea.)20%

Extra Credit:

1)A local, state, or national observation of criminal justice. This may involve a police ride along, attendance at a trial or hearing, a prison tour, an interview with an attorney or judge, an analysis of your own experience inside the justice system, or another instructor-approved observation. You must write a five page description of your experience, contextualize your observations with clear references to course readings, and provide documentation of your experience. You may earn 10 extra credit exam points for this exercise, if conducted properly.See guidelines.

2)You may also earn 5 exam points if you attend 3 Sociology-Criminology Club or criminal justice-related university/community events across the quarter and provide proof of this participation.

All grades, course updates, readings, and assignments will be maintained onBlackboard, which is a quick link on the OU student website.

D. Course Expectations

This class demands that you, as a student, develop a critical orientation to the material in the course. Being critical does not mean simply having an opinion. It means that you think through the material in course, beyond lecture, beyond reading, and develop innovative analytical connections between your own ideas and the new concepts you are presented with. This should be apparent in your writing, discussion, and all engagements of the course. As a class, we will seek to develop a well-informed, critical foundation from which to think about justice in today’s world, questioning where our ideas about justice come from, how they are implemented on a daily basis, and, finally and most importantly, what other and better visions of justice are possible.

E. Course Outline

I. Overview of Criminal Justice System and Organizational Theories
True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice. ~Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered. ~ Aristotle
Week 1
Mon – Jan 07 / Course Introduction: Why study criminal justice?
Wed – Jan 09 / How does a citizen travel through the U.S. criminal justice system?
What is crime? What is the role of the criminal justice system in its definition and measurement?
Reading:
1) ** Selections from Frank Schmalleger’s Criminal Justice: A Brief Overview.
Week 2
Mon – Jan 14 / The Criminal Justice Process: What factors fundamentally shape the nature of American criminal justice administration?
Theme 1: Civil Liberties vs. Crime Control in a Democracy
Reading:
1) Packer, Herbert. “Two Models of the Criminal Process”
Short Written Assignment #1 Due
Wed – Jan 16 / Theme 2: Discretion: Justice as Living and Human
Theme 3: The Open System
Reading:
1) Lipsky, Michael. “Toward a Theory of Street-Level Bureaucracy”
2) Brownstein, Henry H. “The Media and the Construction of Random Drug Violence”
Recommended:
Holley, Joe. “Should the Coverage Fit the Crime”
Week 3
Mon – Jan 21 / Dr. Martin Luther King Day – Holiday Observed
University Closed – no class
II. Police
Justice is incidental to law and order. ~John Edgar Hoover
Wed – Jan 23 / History and Function of Police; Police Subculture
Reading:
1) Miller, Wilbur. “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Policing America.”
2) **Skolnick, Jerome. “A Sketch of the Policeman’s ‘Working Personality’”
Week 4
Mon – Jan 28 / EXAM 1(only covers Part I of the course)
Wed – Jan 30 / Police Subculture
Reading:
1) **Christensen and Crank. “Police Work and Culture in a Nonurban Setting: An Ethnographic Analysis”
2) Hunt and Manning. “The Social Context of Police Lying”
Recommended:
John Van Maanen. “Observations on the Making of Policemen”
Week 5
Mon – Feb 04 / Police Decision-making in Organizational Contexts
Reading:
1) Fyfe, James. “Police Use of Deadly Force: Research and Reform”
2) **Harris, Richard. Selections from Profiles in Injustice
Short Written Assignment #2 Due
Wed – Feb 06 / The Challenge of Policing in a Democracy
Reading:
1) **Herman Goldstein. “Toward Community-Oriented Policing.”
2) David H. Bayley and Clifford D. Shearing. “The Future of Policing”
III. Courts
In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. ~Lenny Bruce
Week 6
Mon – Feb 11 / The Supreme Court
Reading:
1) Lazarus, Edward. “Mortal Combat: How the Death Penalty Polarized the Supreme Court”
2) Walker et al. “Race and Sentencing”
Recommended:
Jasanoff, Sheila. “Judicial Fictions: The Supreme Court’s Quest for Good Science”
Finn-DeLuca. “Victim Participation at Sentencing.”
Wed – Feb 13 / Defining Features of the American Court System
Reading:
1) Feeley, Malcolm. “The Process is the Punishment”
2) McConville and Mirsky. “Guilty Plea Courts”
Short Written Assignment #3 Due
Week 7
Mon – Feb 18 / The Courtroom Workgroup and Plea Bargaining
Reading:
1) Blumberg, Abraham. “The Practice of Law as a Confidence Game”
2) Heumann, Milton. “Adapting to Plea Bargaining: Prosecutors”
Wed – Feb 20 / The Court as an Open System
Reading:
1) Saum, Christine. “Juror Decision Making: Dilemmas of Law and Justice”
2) Huff et al. “Convicted but Innocent”
Week 8
Mon – Feb 25 / EXAM 2
IV. Punishment
“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
Wed – Feb 27 / The Sociology of Prison and the Prison Binge
Reading:
1) **Sykes, Gresham. “The Society of Captives”
2) Irwin et al. “America’s One Million Nonviolent Prisoners”
Week 9
Mon – Mar 03 / Supermax and Working in Prison
Reading:
1) Anderson, George. “Supermax Prisons”
2) ** Conover, Ted. “My Heart Inside Out” from New Jack
Wed – Mar 05 / Re-entry and Intermediate Sanctions
Reading:
1) Abramsky, Sasha. “When They Get Out”
2) **Morris, Norval and Michael Tonry. “Between Prison and Probation: Toward a Comprehensive System of Punishment”
Week 10
Mon – Mar 10 / Capital Punishment
From this day forward, I no longer will tinker with the machinery ofdeath.
~Harry Blackmun
Reading:
1) ** Haney, Craig. 1997. “Psychological Secrecy and the Death Penalty: Observations on the Mere Extinguishment of Life”
Short Written Assignment #4 Due
Wed – Mar 12 / Concluding Reminders - Where do we go from here?
Reading:
1) Roach, Kent. “Four Models of the Criminal Process”
2) Evers, Tag. “A Healing Approach to Crime”

FINAL EXAM: Thursday, March 20 @ 8:00 am in our regular classroom.

[1] Course themes borrow heavily from a syllabus constructed by Dr. Steven Herbert and used in an introductory criminal justice course taught at Indiana University where I served as an assistant instructor.