Course syllabus

 

 

CRIM 301: Issues in Criminal Justice

SEMESTER 2, 2018

15 points

----------------------------

Teacher: 

James C. Oleson

Course delivery format: 

2 hours of lectures and 1 hour of tutorial

Summary of Course Description:              

This course is designed to introduce undergraduates to key issues in criminal justice. Using a combination of readings, lectures, and discussions, students will be familiarized with the basic characteristics of the criminal justice system, and asked to use this knowledge in analyzing various aspects of that system. We will begin with a discussion of justice, the definition of crime, and the measurement of crime. We will then examine the forces that influence crime rates. In the second half of the course, students will study victimology, youth crime, and several institutions within the criminal justice system: police and law enforcement, juries, judges and courts, and corrections. The course employs an international, comparative approach; while a great deal of research on criminal justice originates in the US, students will also be exposed to materials from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, England, and elsewhere, and are expected to relate them to each other.

 Course outcomes:

By the end of the course, a student should:

• Be familiar with the institutional components of the criminal justice system
• Be familiar with the role that discretion plays within the criminal justice system
• Be familiar with key issues in criminal justice and be able to critically analyse both sides of the argument
• Be able to write a research paper related to the criminal justice system, combining academic research and critical analysis
• Be able to write a research paper related to the criminal justice system

To achieve the course objectives listed above you will need to:

• Attend the weekly lecture
• Attend the weekly tutorial
• Read and understand each assigned reading
• Complete the in-class test
• Submit your research paper on time
• Sit the final examination

 Assessment Summary:

15%: 60-minute in-class quiz in week 4

15%: 60-minute in-class quiz in week 8

30%: 2000-word research paper due in week 9

40%: 120-minute final examination (date TBA)

Weekly Topics and Readings (in Canvas, under Files):

Week 1 (17 Jul): Introduction

Please have read: CRIM 301 course syllabus

Week 2 (24 Jul): Knowing: What Is Justice?

Please have read:           

• Fuller, L. (1949). The case of the speluncean explorers. Harvard Law Review, 62(4), 616-645.
• Harrison, R. (1992). The equality of mercy. In H. Gross & R. Harrison (Eds.), Jurisprudence: Cambridge essays (pp. 107-125). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Vonnegut, K. (1968). Harrison Bergeron, in Welcome to the monkey house (pp. 7-14). New York, NY: Delacorte Press.
• OPTIONAL: Plato, The republic (P. Shorey, Trans.) in E. Hamilton & H. Cairns (Eds.), Plato: The Collected Dialogues (pp. 575-605). Princeton, NJ: Bollingen.

Week 3 (31 Jul): Defining: Waging a War on Drugs?         

Please have read:            

• Greenwald, G. (2009). Greenwald, G. (2009). Drug decriminalization in Portugal: lessons for creating fair and successful drug policies. Washington, DC: Cato.
• Nutt, D., King, L. A., Saulsbury, W., & Blakemore, C. (2007). Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse.  Lancet, 369(9566), 1047-1053.
• Reyes, D. A. (2017). The spectacle of violence in Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’. Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 35(3), 111-137.
• OPTIONAL: Worrall, J. L. (2001). Addicted to the drug war: The role of civil asset forfeiture as a budgetary necessity in contemporary law enforcement. Journal of Criminal Justice, 29(3), 171-187.

Week 4 (7 Aug): Measuring: Revealing the Dark Figure of Crime

MIDTERM 1

Please have read:            

• Junger-Tas, J., & Marshall, I. H. (1999). The self-report methodology in crime research. Crime and Justice, 25(1), 291-367.
• Kitsuse, J. I., & Cicourel, A. V. (1963). A note on the uses of official statistics. Social Problems, 11(2), 131-139.
• Morris, A., Reilly, J., Berry, S., & Ransom, R. (2003). New Zealand national survey of crime victims 2001. Wellington: Ministry of Justice [selections].

Week 5 (14 Aug): Reducing: Why the Crime Drop?

Please have read:            

• Drum, K. (2013). America’s real criminal element: Lead. Mother Jones (January/February), available at: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline.
• Levitt, S. D. (2004). Understanding why crime fell in the 1990s: Four factors that explain the decline and six that do not. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18(1), 163-190.
• Tonry, M. (2014). Why crime rates are falling throughout the western world. Crime and Justice, 43(1), 1-63.

Week 6 (21 Aug): Managing: Criminal Justice as a System

Please have read:            

• Brookbanks, W. (2007). The criminal justice system: An overview. In Criminal justice in New Zealand, eds. Julia Tolme & Warren Brookbanks, pp. 125‐52. Wellington: LexisNexis New Zealand.
• Feeley, M. (1979). The process is the punishment (pp. 199-243). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
• Oleson, J. C. (2014). A decoupled system: Federal criminal justice and the structural limits of transformation. Justice System Journal, 35(4), 383-409.

Midsemester Break: 27 August to 9 September

Week 7 (11 Sept): Avenging: Victims of Crime

Please have read:  

• New Zealand Ministry of Justice (2009). A focus on victims of crime: A review of victims’ rights: Public consultation document. Wellington: Ministry of Justice.
• Paroline v. United States, 572 U.S. ___ (2014).

• Walklate, S. (2012). Courting compassion: Victims, policy, and the question of justice. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 51(2), 109-121.

Week 8 (18 Sept): Diverting: Youth Crime

MIDTERM 2

Please have read:            

• Farrington, D.P. (2012). Should the juvenile justice system be involved in early interventions? Criminology & Public Policy, 11(2), 265-273.           
• Moffitt, T. E. (1993). Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: a developmental taxonomy. Psychological Review, 100(4), 674-701.
• Morris, A. (2004). Youth justice in New Zealand. Crime and Justice, 31, 243‐92.

Week 9 (25 Sept): Protecting: Law Enforcement

RESEARCH PAPER DUE                                              

Please have read:            

• Brayne, S. (2017). Big data surveillance: The case of policing. American Sociological Review, 82(5), 977-1008.
• Braga, A. A., & Weisburd, D. L. (2012). The effects of focused deterrence strategies on crime: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the empirical evidence. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 49(3), 323-358.
• Cannon, L. (2000). One bad cop. New York Times Magazine (1 Oct.), available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/01/magazine/one-bad-cop.html
• Greene, J.R. (2013). New directions in policing: Balancing
• prediction and meaning in police research. Justice Quarterly, 31(2), 193-228.

Week 10 (2 Oct): Deliberating: Juries

Please have read:            

• Equal Justice Project (2016). Plea bargaining in our justice system. Auckland, available from: http://equaljusticeproject.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/symposiumpaper.pdf 
• Stuntz, W. J. (2004). Plea bargaining and criminal law's disappearing shadow. Harvard Law Review, 2548-2569.
• Weinstein, J. B. (1992). Considering jury nullification: When may and should a jury reject the law to do justice. American Criminal Law Review, 30, 239-254.

Week 11 (9 Oct): Adjudicating: Judges and Courts

Please have read:            

• Doerner, J. K., & Demuth, S. (2010). The independent and joint effects of race/ethnicity, gender, and age on sentencing outcomes in US federal courts. Justice Quarterly, 27(1), 1-27.
• Oleson, J. C. (2007). The Antigone dilemma: when the paths of law and morality diverge. Cardozo L. Rev., 29, 669-702.
• Oleson, J. C. (2016). HOPE springs eternal: New evaluations of deterrence-based sanctioning. Criminology & Public Policy, 15(4), 1163-1183. 

Week 12 (16 Oct): Punishing: Sanctions and Corrections

Please have read:            

• Aos, S. & Drake, E. (2013). Prison, police, and programs: Evidence-based options that reduce crime and save money (Doc. No. 13-11-1901). Olympia: Washington State Institute for Public Policy.
• Kolber, A. (2009). The subjective experience of punishment. Columbia Law Review, 109, 182-236.
• McMillan, J. (2014). The kindest cut? Surgical castration, sex offenders and coercive offers. Journal of Medical Ethics, 40(9), 583-590.

Examination: TBA (Exam period: 25 October to 12 November)

Workload and deadlines for submission of coursework:           

The University of Auckland's expectation is that students spend 10 hours per week on a 15-point course, including time in class and personal study. Students should manage their academic workload and other commitments accordingly. Deadlines for coursework are set by course convenors and will be advertised in course material. You should submit your work on time. In extreme circumstances, such as illness, you may seek an extension but you may be required to provide supporting information before the assignment is due. Late assignments without a pre-approved extension may be penalised by loss of marks – check course information for details.