Crime, Policing, & Criminal Courts

Catalog description

This course provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the criminal justice system, including its major component parts: criminal law, crime, community policing (especially patrolling, stops, searches, arrests, and the use of force), the judicial processing of state and federal criminal trials, the sentencing of offenders, their punishments, and how the U.S. Constitution plays a role in all of the above. It also introduces students to methods that governments and organizations use to reduce criminal activity through law and public policy. It also introduces students to mass incarceration in our federal and state prison systems and potential alternatives to commonly brutal punishments. We will pay specific attention to politics at the state and local level where the majority of individual interaction with the criminal justice system occurs.