This week we will focus on spatial analysis of mass incarceration in the United States. On the one hand, we will learn that highest imprisonment rates are in small cities, suburbs, and rural areas. For example, we will examine how the Midwest is building jails on contaminated lands. On the other hand, we will explore how incarceration is disproportionately concentrated in disadvantaged, segregated minority neighborhoods. We will look into how public housing developments as a primary site of spatially clustered incarceration.
Holder J, Calaff I, Maricque B, Tran VC. Concentrated incarceration and the public-housing-to-prison pipeline in New York City neighborhoods. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Sep 6;119(36):e2123201119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2123201119.
So grateful for the opportunity to share excerpts from #PunishingPlaces and research with @jaquelynjahn on the effects of the #ACA on policing at the deeply generative and urgently needed @_inquest_. Links to mine below, but please check out many great pieces over the last year: https://t.co/3AUoFfFf68
Our new report puts data behind what we already know: the communities that are most under-resourced in #Delaware are most likely to be over-incarcerated.
This week we will focus on how to conduct scholarly research. We will discuss what means by research, what type of research is criminological, what types of inquiry and data are used, and what role the theory plays in research.
This week we will focus on defining what makes a community. First, we will read an excerpt from a book by Jane Jacobs, a renowned American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Then, we will read a chapter from a book that looks at a community from a criminological point of view. By the end of this week, you will be able to submit your first assignment which would describe the issue and the neighborhood/community you chose for the course project.
In this unit, I would like us to pause and think about the words we routinely use in criminology/criminal justice: offender, criminal, convict, felon, inmates, prisoner, ex-prisoner, juvenile delinquent, and on and on. What unites all these words? What do we communicate to people towards whom we use these words/labels?
In American society, most people believe that individuals shape their own destiny. However, while people have the ability to make decisions, their choices are often shaped or limited by larger social forces, such as our family, our social class, the economy, the education system, and gender norms. C. Wright Mills used sociological imagination to argue that we can only understand our own lives and biographies if we understand the larger history of our society. Making these connections will allow us to see the relationship between our own personal troubles (problems that we face as individuals) and larger public issues (social problems that arise in society).
Learning Objectives
By the end of this week, you will be able to:
Understand the concept of the sociological imagination.
Apply the concept of the sociological imagination.
Understand the connection between personal troubles and public issues.
Understand the role of the sociological imagination for our course.
Workflow
To read:
The Sociological Imagination helps expand our understanding of the history that leads to crime and inequality
