Assignments

Example “type” of assignments.

• Annotated Bibliography: To hone your research skills and support your final paper, you will complete an annotated bibliography. An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and documents. Each citation is followed by a brief (usually about 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph, the annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited

• Case Studies: In order to strengthen our understanding of the sentencing structure, incarceration, and the rights of people who are incarcerated and/or wrongfully convicted, we will examine a number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions and other cases (specifically for people who have been wrongfully convicted). The case studies will help you learn about the contents of the decision, recall the important details of the case, and pave the way for critical reflection.

• Discussion Questions: At various points in the semester, we will set aside time to respond to specific discussion questions. You should explore your personal reaction to material covered in class and/or to current social justice-related events. With this writing, you will be able to process and digest, and simply explore your own reactions to the readings, discussions, films, or podcast.

• Individual Research Project: Theories do not just merely exist, they are applied to real world situations (and at times have dire consequences). To help you become astute social scientists and practitioners and consumers of research, this project will provide you with firsthand experience in program development. You will develop a program for people who are connected to the criminal justice system. With this project, you should begin to better understand the complexities associated with transitioning from jail or prison to the community.

• Journal Article Evaluation: This assignment is designed to assess your skills as a critical reader and to apply the concepts taught in class to published research. Becoming a critical reader will help you to use empirical evidence to examine the impact and effectiveness of our current criminal justices policies and practices.

• Media Analysis: To connect course material with current events and explore the diverse perspectives that exist on specific contemporary criminal justice topics, you will need to subscribe and/or follow news websites. Select a published blog post or newspaper editorial that you find powerful. I will provide a list of topic areas and resources to help guide your search. Briefly explain why you chose this article and analyze the information being conveyed and arguments made in the publication. How does the author convey their ideas, what questions are posed by the author, are the questions answered in the article, what questions are left unanswered, how would you respond to the presented questions, and what are some lessons you can take from their work for your own writing?

• Position Paper: In this course, we will address and discuss a myriad of criminal justice issues and social problems, specifically, matters pertaining to people who are connected to the criminal justice system. Over the course of the semester, you will become familiar with these issues through our readings, discussions, and writing assignments and will have experience and expertise with identifying and writing arguments. For your final paper, you will draft and write an argument to support change on one particular area of interest (e.g. against solitary confinement for people under the age of 18 years old). Your argument must be supported by evidence. This means, you will be required to include peer-reviewed research articles and government reports/data, to support your argument. You will also provide recommendations on how to improve upon the area that you have selected. In this paper, you should define the problem, provide a compelling argument for change, and specify ways to address the problem. Students will submit drafts of this paper for review prior to submitting the final paper.

• Reflective writings and discussion board posts: At various points in the semester, we will set aside time to respond to specific discussion questions. You should explore your personal reaction to material covered in class and/or to current social justice-related events. With this writing, you will be able to process and digest, and simply explore your own reactions to the readings, discussions, films, or podcast.

• Response Papers – Comments/Peer Review:  You should read your peers’ posts and craft a response that shrives to raise new insights and questions. Comments should be at least a paragraph in length and respond to a specific claim or question in your peer’s post.

• Response Papers to Readings: Over the course of the semester, you will submit responses to assigned readings on specific topics (e.g. solitary confinement). For these responses papers, you must now move from summarization to critical analysis of readings. The response paper will reflect a close reading, contain specific examples from the text, and provide a critical analysis and constructed argument about the material. With this assignment, it should be clear that you not only read the material, but understand the purpose, argument, and implications of the reading. This assignment requires dialogue, evaluation, and elaboration of the assigned reading.

• Summarization of Readings: Throughout the semester, you will summarize readings. The goal of this assignment is to help you understand the major ideas and concepts of an article, interpret and translate facts, and explain the associated consequences. In your own words, your summary should explain the basic concepts and/or argument of the text; identify the most important details that support the main ideas; state the major supporting explanations; and express the underlying meaning of the article, not just the superficial details.

• Team Projects: Team members will collaborate on a number of assignments. Some assignments will be minor and others will require significant commitment from each team member. The two (2) major assignments that teams will collectively complete include facilitating class discussion and developing a program or policy that relates to people returning to the community after incarceration.

• Team Research Project and Presentation: Building upon your individual research projects, you and your group will collaboratively work to develop a creative program based on empirical evidence.