JAC 1700: Justice Administration & Criminology Senior Seminar Fall 2017

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1 JAC 1700: Justice Administration & Criminology Senior Seminar Fall 2017 Professor: Ross Kleinstuber, Ph.D. Office: 104-B Krebs Hall Office Phone: (814) Section: 4010 Credit Hours: 3 (lecture) Class Time: Wednesday 3:00-5:40 Room: 118 Krebs Hall Blackboard: Office Hours: Mondays: by appointment Tuesdays: 11:00-12:20 Wednesdays: 12:00-3:00 Thursdays: 11:00-12:20 Fridays: by appointment Knowledge is of no value unless you put into practice. Anton Chekhov Wrongful convictions happen every week in every state in this country. And they happen for all the same reasons. Sloppy police work. Eyewitness identification is the most is the worst type almost. Because it s wrong about half the time. Think about that. John Grisham Course Description This capstone course is designed as a culmination of your collegiate learning experience. It will draw upon your previous courses and present new ideas about the criminal justice system to get you to think about certain aspects of the justice system in a different way and prepare you to write a senior thesis. In this regard, the students will be presented with different perspectives about the criminal justice system and expected to critically analyze those points of view and then to prepare and write their own thesis about one aspect of the criminal justice system, justice administration, or criminology. Course Objectives To challenge students to think critically about certain aspects of the criminal justice system. To learn how to evaluate the strength of an argument and its supporting evidence. To have students be able to express their own views in an intelligent and coherent manner. To enable students to produce and defend their own perspective on one aspect of the justice system, justice administration, or criminology. Course Expectations I have decided to focus this seminar on the mechanisms we use to assess guilt and the risks of wrongful convictions. The readings chosen for this course were deliberately picked to make the readers 1

2 uncomfortable by challenging their assumptions about the accuracy of the justice system and the evidence used to determine guilt or innocence. They each paint a disturbing and negative picture of a system most of us have learned to take for granted in order to determine who is guilty and therefore to keep us safe, but just because we take something for granted does not mean it is the best way to accomplish a goal. The assigned readings will challenge the readers to reconsider the way we run the justice system and to think of ways we might be able to improve its ability to dispense justice. In this regard, readers will not necessarily be expected to agree with any of the authors. Rather, students will be expected to read and critically analyze the arguments being made by the authors and come to class ready to discuss the readings. This course will involve very little lecture; it is designed to be a seminar. This means students will be expected to have read the assigned material prior to class, and they will be expected to be respectful of their classmates at all times. Secondly, you will be expected to prepare a senior thesis; in order to do this, there will be a different part of the thesis due each week. You will be expected to have completed each part each week and come to class prepared to discuss your work with your classmates. The goal is to receive as much help and guidance on the paper as possible throughout the semester. Required Book Scheck, Barry, Peter Neufeld, and Jim Dwyer Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong and How to Make it Right. New York: Signet. *Other readings will be assigned throughout the course and posted on CourseWeb. Recommended Book Benforado, Adam Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice. New York: Crown. Course Requirements Cell Phones: Please turn off your cell phone before class begins and leave the phone out of sight for the entire class. I do not want to see your cell phone during class nor do I want to see you text messaging during class. I find this behavior very distracting, not to mention rude. I reserve the right to answer any cell phone that rings during class or to complete any text message I catch you typing during class (this includes text messaging under your desk on your lap). Attendance and Participation: Students are expected to attend all classes. Students are responsible for ALL material covered in class, whether they are in class or not. Therefore, it is advised that students make a friend in class with whom to share class notes. The professor will not provide notes to students who miss class. Students must get missed notes from other students. Excused absences include (but are not limited to): illness with a doctor s note, serious family emergency, special curricular requirements (e.g., field trips, conferences), religious observances, and participation in official college activities (e.g., athletics). The final decision on excused absences is left to the discretion of the professor and/or the Assistant Vice President of Academic Affairs. Students are required to provide written documentation for their absence. 2

3 It is vital for members of this class to actively participate. Active participation aids in learning class material and provides for a variety of viewpoints in class discussion. Appropriate and respectful disagreement or confrontation of ideas is appropriate for this class. Viewpoints given during discussion will not be used against you. It is important to remember, however, that remarks that are direct personal attacks or that devalue others, will not be tolerated. Videos: I will occasionally show videos in class. It is important that students do not miss these videos, as the professor will not lend videos to students and many of them are not available in the library. These videos are crucial to learning the material and you will be expected to utilize them in writing your papers. Be On Time: Class begins promptly at 3:00 PM, and I expect that you will be in the classroom and prepared to start at that time. Late written assignments: All written assignments are due by the START of class on the due date. Barring extreme extenuating circumstances, one letter grade will be automatically deducted for each day the assignment is late (this includes assignments handed in after class begins on the due date). No assignments will be accepted more than five days late. Assignment Submission Procedure: ALL written assignments MUST be submitted via CourseWeb. To submit a paper via CourseWeb, once you are in the page for this course, select Assignments on the left side. Once there, click on the heading of the assignment you are submitting and this will take you to the submission portal. From the submission portal, you can then upload your paper (please use.doc,.docx, or.pdf formats ONLY). Once you have uploaded your file, click Submit, review your submission, then click OK. If you do not click OK, the paper will not be submitted. Once you submit your paper, you will not be able to resubmit, so please make sure you are uploading the final draft. ing assignments to the instructor is not recommended; however, this may be done if there is a problem submitting your assignment on CourseWeb. You will likely still be asked to submit your paper on CourseWeb as soon as possible. Academic Integrity Statement: Students are expected to be familiar with the University of Pittsburgh s Guidelines on Academic Integrity ( and abide by them. Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. Anyone caught plagiarizing, cheating, or helping anyone do so will be referred to the appropriate university authorities and, at the very least, receive a 0 on the assignment. Additional penalties may apply depending on the nature of the incident. The Guidelines on Academic Integrity forbid students from presenting as one s own, for academic evaluation, the ideas, representations, or words of another person or persons without customary and proper acknowledgment of sources. Plagiarism is dishonest and illegal. Writers are indebted to authors from whom they borrow exact words, ideas, theories, opinions, statistics, illustrative material, or facts (beyond common knowledge). Writers are also indebted if they summarize or paraphrase in their 3

4 own words material from sources. All quoted material requires the acknowledgement of the source by the use of quotation marks or indentation (if exact wording is incorporated). In addition, both directly quoted and summarized material must be acknowledged by use of a note or parenthetical citation that indicates the author and/or date of publication and page number or numbers. If the writer indents a quotation, it must be clearly set off from the body of the text and must be documented in the aforesaid manner. Students are permitted to use any professionally recognized citation style, but to verify the various documentation procedures, writers should consult the style sheet for the particular citation format they are using (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.). (Note: Language of this paragraph was adapted from both the University of Pittsburgh s Guidelines on Academic Integrity and the Indiana University of Pennsylvania s Academic Integrity Policy.) Accommodations Statement: If you have a condition for which you either are or may be requesting an accommodation, you are encouraged to contact both your instructor and the Office of Health and Counseling Services, G-10 Student Union, , as early as possible in the term. The Office of Health and Counseling Services can verify your disability and determine reasonable accommodations for this course. Methods for Evaluation 1. Actual Innocence review essays: The book for this course, Actual Innocence, will be divided into three parts. You will be required to write a review essay for each of the three parts. These reviews will be worth 50 points each and should include a brief summary of the section of the book you are reviewing, including the main thesis or theses and the evidence used to support the thesis or theses. They should also include a critical analysis of the book. In other words, you need to explain with which parts you agreed and disagreed and why? There is no right or wrong answer, but you will be required to show that you read the book (and the supplemental readings) and to produce factual evidence to support your position. The goal of these assignments is to have you analyze the strength of an argument and to find and utilize supporting factual evidence. This skill will be indispensable in writing your senior thesis. More detailed instructions and questions will be posted on CourseWeb. 2. Senior Thesis: The culmination of this course and your justice administration and criminology education at UPJ will be the production of your own senior thesis. You should think of this as a superterm paper. I will be expecting more than a standard term paper. I expect you to choose a topic related to criminology, criminal justice, or justice administration that interests you, to produce a thesis about that topic, and to do in depth research about that topic in order to present compelling evidence in support of that thesis. This paper should reflect your four years of education about criminology and the criminal justice system, and it should be the culminating piece of your undergraduate endeavor. You should produce a paper that you would be proud to show to a potential employer or to include in a graduate school or law school application. You should think about this paper as the most important assignment of your undergraduate career. In consultation with the instructor, you may choose any topic that has any relationship whatsoever to the fields of criminology, criminal justice, or justice administration. I encourage you to select a topic that reflects your own course history, interests, and future plans in the field. I have dedicated class time 4

5 EACH WEEK to reviewing your progress on your thesis and providing assistance to anyone who needs it. Therefore, there will be a graded assignment due each week that is designed to ensure that you are making appropriate progress on the thesis. A schedule of these assignments and due dates is provided below, and greater details about each assignment and the final paper will be provided on CourseWeb. Grading and Grading Scale: Book Reviews (3 x 50 points each) = 150 points Senior Thesis (14 total assignments) = 300 points Grades will be calculated based on total points earned as follows: Letter Grade Points Earned A A B B B C C C D D D F Less than 268 *All grades will be posted on CourseWeb, and students are strongly encouraged to monitor their own progress on CourseWeb. CourseWeb: Students should check the class website on a regular basis in order to stay informed of classroom information. All announcements, class cancellations, schedule changes, extra readings, and writing assignments, will be posted on CourseWeb. Students should check CourseWeb regularly and check the announcements prior to leaving for class each day. Course Schedule **The additional readings will be posted on CourseWeb. ***Please note: this schedule is tentative and subject to change at the instructor s discretion. Please check CourseWeb to get scheduling updates. *** Date August 30 September 6 Topic, Assigned Readings, and Assignments Due Course Introduction and Overview Film: Central Park Five Topic Statement Due The Problem of Wrongful Convictions; Film Discussion Scheck, et al., Introduction and Chapter 1 5

6 September 13 September 20 September 27 October 4 October 11 October 18 October 25 November 1 November 8 November 15 List of 5 Sources Due Eyewitnesses Scheck, et al., Chapters 2 & 3 Benforado, Chapter 6 Topic Proposal Due Confessions Scheck, et al., Chapter 4 Benforado, Chapter 2 Starr, The Interview Brown, False Confessions Like Brendan Dassey s Purtill, The Dangerous Psychology of How False Confessions Review of Chapters 1-4 Due List of 10 Sources Due Expert Witnesses Scheck, et al., Chapter 5 Notecards Due Snitches Scheck, et al., Chapter 6 Light, Fresh Doubts Over a Texas Execution Thesis Statement Due Forensic Science FILM: When Babies Die, A Disputed Diagnosis Scheck, et al., Chapter 7 Grann, Trial by Fire Lithwick, Pseudoscience in the Witness Box Lussenhop, Can You Catch a Killer Using Only Teeth Marks? Mnookin, Fingerprints: Not A Gold Standard Revised Thesis Statement Due Prosecutorial Misconduct Scheck, et al., Chapter 8 Benforado, Chapter 4 Preliminary Outline Due Defense Attorneys & Plea Bargains Scheck, et al., Chapter 9 Rakoff, Why Innocent People Plead Guilty Review of Chapters 5-9 Due List of 15 Sources Due Race & Gender Scheck, et al., Chapter 10 Natapoff, The Cost of Quality of Life Policing Redden, Why is It So Hard for Wrongfully Convicted Women Updated Notecards Due Death Penalty & Innocence Scheck, et al., Chapter 11 Revised/Detailed Outline Due 6

7 November 22 November 29 December 6 December 13 After Exoneration FILM: After Innocence Scheck, et al., Chapter 12 NO CLASS THANKSGIVING RECESS Rough Draft Due Suggestions for Reform Scheck, et al., Chapters 13 & 14, and Appendix 1 Benforado, pp , , TIME, The Next 25 Years: An Agenda Review of Chapters Due Second Draft Due Peer Review of Second Draft SENIOR THESIS DUE BY 3:00 PM General Disclaimer: The instructor reserves the right to change, during the course session, any part of this syllabus, as deemed necessary. 7