|
|
|
|
Syllabus
CCJ 5309
Penology
Summer 2006 Dr. Cecil Greek
Contact Points: Personal Web Page: http://home.earthlink.net/~cegreek/index.html Required Texts: Blomberg, Thomas and Stanley Cohen (eds.). (2003). Punishment and social control. (2nd edition). NY:Aldine de Gruyter. Blomberg, Thomas and Karol Lucken. (2000). American penology. NY:Aldine de Gruyter. Garland, David. (2001). The culture of control. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Garland, David. (1990). Punishment and modern society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Johnson, Robert. (2002). Hard time: Understanding and reforming the prison. (3rd edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Latessa, Edward et al (eds.). (2005). Correctional contexts: Contemporary and classical readings. (3rd edition). Los Angeles: Roxbury. ISBN: 1931719594 Rothman, David. (1990). The discovery of the asylum. (revised edition). NY:Aldine de Gruyter. You can order all of these from the FSU Bookstore and they will be shipped as one order. Order on-line through efollett at http://shop.efollett.com/htmlroot/storehome/floridastateuniversity208.html
Course Overview: As with all social institutions, one of the best ways to approach an understanding of how we got to our current situation is through historical review of past practices leading up to the present. This is certainly the case with our society’s decision that the prototypical form of punishment for criminal offenders ought to be incarceration in a penal facility. Thus, the first part of the course will focus on the historical constellation of factors that led to the adoption and eventual acceptance of prisons as the American way of punishment. However, once the prison model was adopted, it did not remain stagnant. Each generation of reformers and penologists offered ways to improve the outcome of inmates’ prison experiences. Ideas about sentencing, optimal prison regimes and “treatment” changed as a result. An important theoretical trend to analyze is what these changes implied about our society’s overall vision of how to socially control deviant individuals and populations. David Garland has best analyzed these changes. The course will focus on the major models developed in the “sociology of punishment,” up to and including our current system’s move toward “post-modern” punishment regimes. The second half of the course will discuss some of the major critical issues within contemporary correctional systems. These topics include those who live and work within correctional settings. Inmate subcultures have been of interest to criminologists since the mid-20th century. On the other hand, the experiences of correctional staff has only more recently been subjected to penological study. Nevertheless, how correctional staff maintain order without being seen as legitimate power holders by inmates remains an important sociological question. As total control is not possible (except in supermax type facilities), how inmates and correctional staff interact to maintain order is an important empirical area of study. As the United States is one of the few modern nations to retain the death penalty, we will discuss several issues related to its contemporary use. Included will be subtopics such as false convictions, racial imbalance in its usage and life on death row. The long standing debates about the functions of prisons include considerable discussion of whether prisons can “cure” crime. In particular, various treatment modalities have been created and utilized in hopes of reducing recidivism. The current ethos is anti-treatment, pro-punishment; nevertheless, treatment programs, broadly defined, continue within most correctional systems. Since the 1960s, American correctional institutions have been an arena no longer considered “hands off” to inmates’ Constitutional rights. The course will cover the impact of opening our correctional institutions to the courts, current inmates’ rights and the continuing struggle for legal authority. Another product of the 1960s was the massive expansion of community corrections as an alternative to prison. While first argued for from anti-labeling and anti-stigmatization perspectives, the current rationale for community corrections comes from the more crime-control oriented intermediate sanctions movement. Is this movement a genuine alternative to prison or further example of net widening? The course will conclude with a discussion of where we go from here. Will the future bring greater or lesser use of incarceration? Will treatment become more widely supported again? Will simple economics lead to greater use of community options? What are the future technologies that will be employed in 21st Century social control? Mandatory First Day Attendance Policy: All students are required to attend the first day of class or they are dropped from FSU courses. As this class does not meet in person, the method of taking attendance on the first day will be conducted via email. Students are required to send an email to the instructor on Monday May 9 by 11:59 PM or they will be dropped from the course. Send the email to cgreek@mailer.fsu.edu. Course Readings by Week and Topic:
Author Key: Blomberg and Lucken (B&L), Blomberg and Cohen (B&C), Garland-1990 (G1), Garland-2001 (G-2), Johnson (J), Latessa (L), Rothman (R).
Class Discussions and Writing Assignments:
Assignment One (Readings Discussions): Each student will be primary discussant on one of the readings’ chapters each reading section (2 per week), while all students will submit questions to the discussant. Depending upon how many students are in the class and how many readings there are in any particular section, some chapters may have more than one discussant, but students will only be required to submit one question per chapter summary posted. These discussions will take place inside the discussion boards on the Blackboard system, which will be set up by weeks with a separate discussion thread for each article/chapter. https://campus.fsu.edu/webapps/login
A. Discussion
leader’s role: Your article/chapter summary should be approximately one
to two pages long and include the following components: 2. A one paragraph discussion of each of the points made in the abstract. 3. A discussion of the data sources used by the author (historical materials, surveys, interviews, theoretical treatises, etc.). Be specific.
4. A discussion of the author’s overall point
of view (e.g., liberal, conservative? crime-control, civil libertarian?
biased, unbiased? etc.). (For examples of discussion of what might constitute
"bias" [conservative, liberal, anti-institutional, gender, racial, etc.] see
issues of the journal Criminology and Public Policy and/or the
following Web sites: 5. What’s missing from the author’s discussion? Is there another side to this issue the author seems to have ignored? Use the other readings, for example, to detail what's missing B. Student responders’ role: Your assignment is to post a question is response to your fellow classmate’s article/chapter review. The question can be about any one of the 5 items (from the above list) in the article review. The question can ask for clarification, additional information, or offer an opinion different from the discussion leader’s on the article. C. The discussion leader will respond to the student’s question or request for additional clarification. Clarification can come from additional information in the original chapter or from any other readings in the same section of the course. The discussion leader will post their summaries by Wednesday night at midnight for section a and Sunday night at midnight for section b each week. (Thus, week one section a discussion summaries are due by May 11th and section b by May 15th.) Students will have the next two days to post their questions. The discussion leader will reply to student questions over the next two days. (Being a day or so late is not OK, but anyone who falls more than a week behind will not be permitted to make up the assignment and lose the opportunity to earn credit for the assignment.)
Summer 2005
specific directions:
3 groups of 4 each have been created. Click the "Groups" button on the Campus site for the course to see which group you are in.
Here's the way we will facilitate Assignment 1, using the
groups:
1. I have created discussion board forums within your group page for each of the first 6 discussions for first 3 weeks. 2. I have given full moderator privileges to each student. This allows you to create new threads within each forum (1A, 1B, etc.) 3. To become the discussant for an article for that section of the course, go to the group forum discussion for that section. If no one has yet created a post indicating they want that article/chapter it's yours to discuss. If someone else has already claimed the article you want, you must choose another. 4. If you want to, you can choose the chapter/article you want for all 6 forums related to Assignment 1 now, as these forums have already been created.
It is essential that you not fall behind, as this
messes up all the other students in your group. If you are the initial
discussant you must post in a timely manner. As respondents you must reply
to the discussant within the time limitations, etc. Please report to me via
email students in your group you notice not participating, so this can be
rectified. I'll will be checking in almost daily as well to make sure that
all are participating. These discussions are the equivalent of classroom
discussions. If you don't participate, it's like not going to class.
Here's the time line we need to work towards keeping each week. The entire week (A&B portions) runs from Tuesday through Monday night at 11:59PM. Main discussant posts should be going up by W night for A and Sat night for B. Students questions should come in over the following two days (TH and F for A) (Sa and Su for B). The readings discussants then have until Monday night to reply to all the questions. If you post your summaries, questions, or responses late you will mess up the other students in your group. I will read and grade material starting on Tuesday mornings. If there is a reason you can not keep to this schedule for next 3 weeks please email me to let me know.
Assignment Two (Comparisons to Media
Stereotypes Concerning Corrections): In the second half of the course we will move from intensive discussion of the readings to an application of the readings. As most Americans have never been inside a prison or jail and not taken a college course on corrections, their knowledge is based primarily on fictional (movies and TV shows like Oz) and journalistic accounts. One of the goals of the course will be to compare these popular culture images of corrections to scholarly academic literature. For each section (A & B) the student will be required to compare one popular culture account to two of the scholarly sources for that section (2 scholarly sources per section). Thus, in week Four A the student will compare a movie, TV show, chapter from a prison novel or newspaper story, TV documentary, etc. to two of the required reading articles on correctional staff. For week 5A, popular culture images of treatment and rehabilitation will be the topic. And, so on through week 6. I've elsewhere written on how Hollywood depicts prisons. See: http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimefilm/week6.html Sample Movies list plus IMDB Keyword Search Sample Newspaper Articles Page Media selections can be used only once. Each week you must submit a new media selection. The film Shawshank Redemption can not be used. Each submission should be approximately 2 pages in length. These will be submitted using the discussion forum for the appropriate week. Submit both a Word document and copy and paste the text into a discussion forum post. A. Write a summary (around one half page) of the information provided or plot of the media source. B. Your follow-up discussion should include both comparisons and contrasts.
Each student will also be required to write one response to each student’s post. This can not be an “I agree with everything you said” response. The student must discuss one other article from the week’s assigned scholarly readings not covered in the student's original post, and specifically cite that article. You must choose a different scholarly source for each of your response posts. (Some extra readings for comparison purposes have been posted for death penalty and correctional officers.) It can be one of the articles you used in your own submission, if it is directly relevant. What insights does the article you have selected have for discussion of the topic? Please discuss more than one item from your source which is relevant to your commentary. Expected length for each response post is one paragraph (100 to 150 words). The discussion leader will post their summaries for part A by Wednesday night at midnight each week. (Thus, week 4A post is due by May 31st, Week 4a responses by F; Week 4B due Saturday night June 3rd and responses by Tu, etc. (Being a day or so late is OK, but anyone who falls more than a week behind will not be permitted to make up the assignment and lose the opportunity to earn credit for the assignment.) During the first half of the course you can be collecting the popular culture materials you wish to analyze. If you’re off to the video store to rent a movie, consider watching a prison film. (All the episodes of Oz are now on DVD, for example.) There are a number of ways to collect news stories about prisons. The organization of
Criminal Justice Journalists sends a daily email of major criminal justice
stories written by their members, and appearing in national newspapers.
Criminal Justice Journalists (CJJ) provides a summary of the nation's top
crime and justice news stories with Internet links, if any. If you are
interested in receiving their news report, Crime & Justice News, please use
their
registration form. You can also go
to their
News Center site to search all
archived CJN stories. A site that
specifically sends out information on international criminal justice news
stories, including corrections in the U/S. and other countries, is
WJIN: The World Justice Information Network. You will need to enroll with
WJIN first, then sign up for the news clipping service. News Bots are reviewed here.
Google now has a news search feature as well. In order to track current news stories one can build an online, updateable newspaper/magazine page or set up a news clipping service. Crayon assists you in building a customized newspaper choosing from the specific sections of thousands of online newspapers and other media sources. As these newspaper sections are updated daily, your personal Crayon newspaper continues to provide up to date news. You may locate other ways to track such stories. Please share these with the class via email. If you locate other good news clipping services, please let the class know about them. As an FSU student you can use the Lexis-Nexis news service, too. It's directly linked from the FSU Library databases page under L. Assignment Three (Term Paper): The term paper will be due during the final week of class on, Wednesday June15th by midnight. You may turn your paper in early. The purpose of this assignment is to become more familiar with one of the issues raised about corrections in this course. The paper can focus on any topic related to course discussion. Your primary source of materials must be recently published, scholarly academic articles and books. Synthesis level understanding of the themes discussed in this course is expected. On synthesis level knowledge, see Bloom's taxonomy. If your paper, for example, is on inmate subcultures then your discussion must demonstrate awareness of the major theoretical models used to explain the nature of inmate subcultures. This is the only reason to refer to materials in the course reading list in your paper and list them on your paper's reference list. Your own unique research is to be based upon the other books and scholarly articles you collect to write the paper. These do not count toward the 15 sources minimum needed. Submit your topic for the paper via email directly to the instructor by May 18th. A “complete” bibliography is due by May 25th (submit via email). A sample bibliography has been posted. You may also turn in an outline, abstract, sections of the paper, etc., if you wish for the instructor’s review, but this is not required.
Submitting Papers: Please name your papers using your last name as part of the file name. Thus, the paper submitted by Bob Jones would be named with the filename jones.doc. Please send papers to the instructor (in Word format or Word Perfect if at all possible; in not as RTF files) by using the Digital Drop Box feature within Blackboard. Follow the steps below to access the Digital Drop Box. Step 1 Click the Student Tools Button. Step 2 Click Digital Drop Box in the Student Tools area. Step 3 Click Send File. Browse to the Location of the Document on your Computer’s Hard Drive to Upload the Document. (Note: “Add File” Button only uploads the file to your personal drop box, not to the instructor) Paper Format: The paper will use APA format. See: http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/ccj2020/apa.htm FOLLOW THIS EXACTLY! A sample outline in APA format is also available in Microsoft Word format, download from: http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/ccj2020/apa-paperoutline.doc For complete paper writing guidelines, including citation and plagiarism rules, see: http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/ccj2020/paperguidelines.htm Specifically, these format rules must be followed:
Points will be deducted if this format is not followed. If the paper contains no citations or includes plagiarized material, a zero will be given. All material, not your own, must be cited. Papers will be graded on content, punctuation, and grammar. Papers missing proper citations will be graded down as this is a form of academic dishonesty. It is essential that you start work on this early in the semester and work on it over the course of the entire semester. It is the biggest percentage portion of points for the entire course, so writing an inadequate paper could affect your overall grade in the course significantly.
Course Grading Criteria: 1. Week 1-3 Discussion
Forums per week (2 forums per week) Thus, 50 points possible per week x 3 weeks = 150 points 2. Week 4-6 Discussion Forums per week (2 forums per week) Student Initial Discussion
Post = 15 points Thus, 50 points possible per week x 3 weeks = 150 points 3. Course Term Paper = 200 points 500 Total Points Grading Scale :
465-500 A 450-464 A- 430-449 B+ 411-429 B 400-410 B- 380-399 C+ 370-379 C 350-369 C-
Honor Code:
Students are expected to uphold the
Academic Honor Code published in The Florida State University Bulletin and the
Student Handbook. The Academic Honor System
of The Florida State University is based on the premise that each student has
the responsibility (1) to uphold the highest standards of academic integrity in
the student’s own work, (2) to refuse to tolerate violations of academic
integrity in the university community, and (3) to foster a high sense of
integrity and social responsibility on the part of the university community. Students with
disabilities: Students with
disabilities needing academic accommodation should: (1) be registered with the
Student Disability Resource Center on his or her own campus; (2) bring a letter
to the instructor indicating the need for accommodation and what type. This
should be done during the first week of class. This syllabus may be made
available in an alternate format upon request. |
