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Criminal Justice 350: Punishment and Sentencing
Fall 2001

Jon'a Meyer, Ph.D.                                                                                                        Armitage 362, 225-6207
Office Hours: T-Th 1-3  & by appt.

This course looks at both corrections and sentencing and how they intersect. This course looks at both corrections and sentencing and how they intersect. After covering theories of crime and punishment to gain a fundamental understanding of how sentencing "happens," we will look at the process of sentencing and the frameworks under which it takes place. We will also examine historical and contemporary corrections, and the affects of court processes on corrections and sentencing.

Texts:

- Meyer, Jon'a and Jesilow, P. (1997). 'Doing Justice' in the People's Court: Sentencing by Municipal Court Judges. New York: State University of New York Press.

 
- The following articles which are available from Rutgers' own virtual library. Note: these articles are not "internet stuff"; they are real journal articles that are part of our library's holdings and just happen to be stored on the internet. You are free to browse the holdings and use them for any of my assignments and for assignments in other classes, too (unless the assignment is designed to test your library skills). The articles are true copies so the printouts will look exactly like a xerox copy of the actual journal. Nifty, eh? To access the articles, you will have to use a Rutgers computer or validate yourself (see the directions on the library homepage for validation).

NOTE: If the direct links don't work, click here for JTOR, then click on 'Enter JSTOR,' then go to 'Browse' and the journal title, volume, and page. You may print the article by clicking on print icon on the left hand side and following the directions.

Please complete the reading assignments before coming to class because there will be daily discussion of the material. Participation in these discussions will be considered part of your grade.

All students must sign up for the class listserve (click here to sign up). The class listserve homepage contains the homework questions and all course updates and study guides will be distributed via email. Sign up early so you don't miss anything important. When you sign up, OneList (the host for our site) will send you a confirmatory email. You will not be a member until you reply to that email (if you have already signed up with OneList, you will automatically be added to the listserve without the confirmatory email). OneList does that to prevent people from signing you up for listserves to which you do not wish to subscribe.

Questions to help you prepare for the class discussions and exams are assigned for each reading selection and appear on the "Files" page of the class listserve. Your answers should be ready to turn in at the beginning of class on Tuesday and should be typed or neatly handwritten. You will not receive full credit for answers merely copied from the readings.

There will be two exams, each worth 25 points. Please arrange for makeup examinations prior to the date of the test. The examinations will cover lecture and discussion materials, any films presented, and reading assignments. Half an hour after the start of each exam, I will post the answers. Students arriving after the posting of the answers will not be able to take the exam with the class.

About once a week, I will email a question to the class listserve. You need only respond to 10 postings and your responses will go back to me. You may post to the listserve any news you think is important to share with your classmates (e.g., job announcements, etc). The floor rules for the listserve are that there is to be no flaming, no inappropriate material (e.g., profanity, slurs, etc.), no forwarded jokes, and no forwarding of messages without the original author's permission. In other words, this is a confidential listserve. It is hosted by YahooGroups without cost.

Here's your chance to be a rock star! Simply write a song that teaches something about the class material (either from lecture or from the readings). If you prefer, you may change the words to a familiar song (e.g., "row, row, row your boat"), using the familiar tune for your teaching song. If you're not the musical type, poetry is also fine. You get to pick the weeks you do, and each song is worth 5 points. That's 10 points total.

Advertisers wanted! You've seen good advertisements and you've seen bad ones. The good ones spell out the benefits of a product and how that product fits a consumer's needs. Good ads may point out issues or product components that consumers never knew they needed. Good ads spell out the information consumers need in order to make informed choices about products. Bad ads, on the other hand, may show products in a good light, but make unrealistic claims or do not really "sell the product" to the consumer due to a lack of research on the product.

Your job is to create a series of advertisements "selling" different sentencing options to the many and varied stakeholders in Camden's criminal justice system. You will create five different ads selling the sanction to: (1) the public- who has to support sanctions; (2) judges- who have responsibility for imposing sanctions; (3) policymakers/legislators- who have to pass laws or create rules enabling the sanction to exist; (4) offenders- who end up complying with the sanction, and (5) victims- who are often forgotten by the criminal justice system. Accompanying your five-ad series should be a 5-7 page paper presenting the rationale presented in the ads (e.g., historical information, statistics on successful use in other jurisdictions, and other academic information that the stakeholders may feel is important). This paper should present all the information you felt was important in making your ads, and also answer the following questions: what is the history of the sanction, for which offenders is it most appropriate, in which sentencing philosophy does it appear to be rooted, how "successful" is the sanction in reducing recidivism, what are the pros and cons of the sanction, and why you feel it is important to write about?

This is no slouch assignment and will take you some serious time to master the research on your sanction before creating the ads. You will want to find at least five published resources on your sanction and cull from them the information you feel is important. This step is so important that you will receive 15 points for completing a custom annotated bibliography. You may complement your readings with information from the internet, but at least five resources should be bona fide publications. We will cover the format of the bibliography in class.

The ads will be posted on the class listserve, but you may scan a drawn ad to save yourself from having to master HTML to the level that would be necessary to lay out a good ad. To save yourself some time, you might use either a wordprocessor (like Word) or PowerPoint to layout and create your text, then tape and xerox your artwork into place. You may use any program you wish, so long as the final product looks nice. Please do not use copyrighted images or information because the ads may be posted on the Internet.

You may work in pairs on the actual advertisments, but your papers should be unique. Your annotated bibliographies should cover different publications (thus, increasing your pool of research to 10 publications from which to draw information).

We will meet in class on a day to critique one anothers' papers. Review of others' work is an important step in creating polished writing, so you will receive 5 points for reviewing and writing a brief critique of someone else's paper. Please bring a spare copy of your paper to class to exchange with a classmate.

Music soothes the savage beast and the savage stress, too. Any of you who sign up to show up ten minutes before class and play some relaxing music for your fellow classmates before class will get 2 points. You'll have to provide your own CD player or cassette player, but I have some CDs and cassettes that you may borrow if you don't have any of your own. You may earn up to 4 points doing this.

There are a total of 200 points available in this class. Grades will be based on the total points for the semester, using the standard 90% = A, 80% = B, etc. scale.
 50 pts: exams
 20 pts: email qs
 10 pts: songs
 15 pts: annotated bibliography for at least five publications (turn in actual publications with your bibliography)
 30 pts: five advertisements (6 points each)
 25 pts: paper
  5 pts: critique
 25 pts: reading qs
 20 pts: participation
200 pts: TOTAL

Deadlines for assignments are firm, so you will lose 10% of your assignment grade for each day an assignment is due. Please arrange for extensions before the assignments are due if you don't want to pay the fine. Do not turn in your only copy of any assignment in case it is lost or destroyed.

Students are responsible for knowing the regulations of the department, college, and university with regards to topics such as withdrawals, academic misconduct (those who engage in any form of academic dishonesty will fail this course), incomplete grades, and so on.

If you have a disability that might interfere with your performance or safety in this class, please speak confidentially with me, or call the Disabled Student programs office, and/or the ADA Coordinator. I am willing to make any concessions the Disabled Student services office recommends in order to make your experience in my class a rewarding and meaningful experience.
 

There are probably as many sacred days as there are people. If your faith celebrates holidays on any day that an assignment is due or an exam is given, and you wish to observe that holiday, you may do so. You must notify me within the first two weeks of class so that I may schedule late examinations or extend paper due dates for you. If you do not notify me within that time period, I must assume that the dates listed on this syllabus are acceptable to you. Please reconcile the syllabus with your own personal schedule and get back to me if necessary.

wk 1: Introduction & Theories of crime                                      brainstorming with partner and choosing sanctions
wk 2: Theories of crime & punishment theories                            M&J: chap1
wk 3: Introduction to research and stats                                       M&J: chap2, brainstorming with partner
wk 4: Discretion                                                                         M&J: chap3, list of five publications due
wk 5: Pre-Sentence investigation reports                                      annotated bibliography due
wk 6: Process of sentencing                                                      M&J: chap 4
wk 7: Factors in sentencing                                                         M&J: chap5
wk 8: REVIEW & MIDTERM (10/25/01)
wk 9: Available sanctions                                                            M&J: chap6
wk 10: Draft of paper due for critique, brainstorming with partner on ads (11/8/01)
wk 11: Available sanctions (cont.)                                              Life in Prison, brainstorming with partner on ads
wk 12: Discrimination                                                                Gibson, Elliot
wk 13: Reforms                                                                        Welch,  Paper and advertisements due
wk 14: Plea bargains
wk 15: FINAL: 12/20/01 2-5pm