AFRC638 - RACE & CRIMINAL JUSTICE

This advanced seminar analyzes the connection between race, crime, punishment, and politics in the United States. The primary focus is on the role of race in explaining why the country's prison population increased six-fold since the early 1970s and why the United States today has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Topics to be covered include: the early history of race in the development of the criminal justice system, including an examination of lynchings and the convict-leasing system; the relationship between the crime rate, patterns of offending and arrests, and the incarceration rate; public opinion and law-and-order" politics; U.S. penal policies compared with other industrialized countries; capital punishment; the growth of the prison-industrial complex; the "war on drugs"; the courts, prisoners' rights, and political prisoners; felon disenfranchisement, elections, and democracy; and the future of penal reform. This seminar is designed for advanced undergraduates, as well as graduate students. The readings and assignments will be adjusted accordingly for graduate students. The class will likely take field trips to a maximum-security jail in Philadelphia and to a state prison in the Philadelphia suburbs.