Crime and Punishment

Catalog description

This course is a survey of research on the carceral state from a political science perspective. It will cover the carceral policies and imprisonment in the United States, the criminalization of others, race, gender, and mass incarceration, the shadow carceral state, carceral contact and political participation, incarceration and outcomes for individuals and communities, youth incarceration, and migrant detention. Overall, in this course, we will confront our assumptions about incarceration and detention in the U.S., and critically examine the ways in which we are already connected to, invested in, and increasingly dependent upon a criminal justice system that relies on the mass warehousing of people of color and socio-economically disadvantaged people. This course aims to help students develop their writing and college-success skills while learning about one of the key legal and social justice issues of our era: how law, police, courts, and prison work in an increasingly diverse and economically divided society. Do the police stop blacks more than whites? Who is arrested, who is prosecuted and who is imprisoned, and what are the effects on American communities? Does punishment deter crime? To address these questions, we will study how crime is defined and experienced, how the police, courts and prisons are organized and do their work, and how these institutions interact with our communities.