Communities & Crime

Catalog description

This course will focus on understanding why crime varies across neighborhoods and communities. Students will discuss the ways in which the community is associated with one?s involvement in crime, as well as how contexts most susceptible to criminal behavior develop over time. Students will be introduced to prominent criminological theories improving our understanding of why some communities and neighborhoods have more crime than others, and we will incorporate other perspectives to examine the intersection between individuals and their surroundings. Topics of this course include perceptions of crime in neighborhoods, interactions with police in certain neighborhoods, violence, and the presence of drugs in communities. As a whole, this course will discuss how social inequality in the United States affects the concentration of crime.