week 1 crim

Writing Assignment

In a 2-page essay, students will select ONE of the subjects listed below and write a 2-page paper on the topic of your choice.

Students must include a minimum of two references, one being from an outside, non-GU source.

Please be very sensitive to the issues of plagiarism! All of the written work submitted must clearly be your own. Keep in mind transcription of material (copying), followed by parenthetical identification of the source with little or no original thought added does not constitute an adequate essay. You are expected to provide some evidence that at least a significant portion of the each essay is your own reaction to, thought about or evaluation of the subject of the essay, composed in your own words. Agreement, disagreement, examples, etc. are appropriate – as long as evidence of some thoughtful and pertinent independent thought, reaction, or response to the term or question is included.

1. Summarize the social, political, and scientific ideas advocated during the Age of Reason and the effect those ideas had on correctional thinking.

2. Corporal punishments such as canings/whipping are still used in some parts of the world. Consider the 2009 case of American Kamari Charlton, a former college football player, who was sentenced to caning in Singapore. What purpose is served by such a punishment? Should America intervene; why or why not?

3. Describe and discuss the primary political, social, economic and institutional factors that gave rise to each era of correctional thinking, as well as those that doomed each successive reform.

4. With which theory of crime you most identify? Explain how you arrived at this conclusion? What type of punishment or correctional approach would correspond with “your” theory?

5. The nature and practices of corrections relates to environment. What kinds of conditions were prevalent in the South after the Civil War and how did this landscape affect corrections? Was anything unique or distinct in this region? What elements of today’s environment affect the nature and practices of corrections?