Introduction to Criminal Justice Systems

Catalog description

This course provides an introduction to social issues that are currently affecting the criminal justice system in the United States. The course will cover the history of the U.S. criminal justice system and how our system compares with other countries. We will address how the U.S. criminal justice system attempts to create and preserve a balance between sustaining order, maintaining individual rights, and promoting justice. Important themes also include, but are not limited to discussions of how crime and delinquency are measured, key correlates of crime, sociological approaches to researching crime, sociological theories of crime, the quality of crime data in the U.S. and how it is used to make public policy decisions, and the causes and consequences of mass incarceration in the United States. Prerequisite: 1110.