Issues in Criminal Justice

Catalog description

This course invites students to participate in a critical analysis of the American Criminal Justice System. The administration of “justice” as a selective process and the social and political contexts and contests within which social control is articulated will be explored in this course. Particular attention is given to the front line criminal judicial agencies and actors that serve to reproduce order. Inherent in the examination of the criminal justice processes are specific inquiries into social, political and economic struggles that characteristically reflect fundamental issues of social inequality. Institutional structures and their attendant networks are explained in relationship to the state and its differential networks. The nature of the criminal justice agencies and actors, degrees of enforcement and interrelationships with coercive agencies will be investigated. Prerequisite(s): CRIM 100 and Junior or Senior. Corequisite(s): None.