Criminal Justice Reform Seminar

Catalog description

Across the country, fiscal pressures, political changes, and a growing embrace of evidence-based approaches to policymaking have created a momentum around criminal justice reform. These reform efforts seem especially promising because of their interdisciplinary roots and their bipartisan support. While some data points - like drops in prison populations and declining arrest rates - demonstrate the these initial efforts are having an incremental impact, more transformative reforms are needed. The seminar will address criminal justice reform broadly, covering a range of criminal justice reform topics including, for example, prosecutorial discretion, right to counsel, sentencing and punishment, reentry, mental health issues, risk assessment, juvenile rights, plea bargaining, privatization, and comparative international criminal justice reform. The course will include special focus on three particular areas of criminal justice reform that are currently capturing significant attention in the criminal justice community: (i) policing, (ii) pretrial detention and bail reform, and (iii) the opioid crisis. Students taking this course will learn about these topics through in-class guess speakers, assigned readings, and their own outside research. Students will assemble a final report focusing on criminal justice reform topics. The final projects are expected to include practical blue prints for federal, state, or local policymakers. In developing their own writing projects for the course, students will have the option of working alone (to satisfy the College of Law Writing Requirement) or collaborating with others to develop reports on the aforementioned topics.