Sheryl Van Horne

Summer Classes 2002

Comparative Criminal Justice Systems: This course will examine international approaches to criminal justice in various countries. We will talk at great length about the systems in England, France, Germany, China, and Japan. We will also spend time discussing other countries, including Nigeria, South Korea and Switzerland. The course will culminate in a student project whereby students will present researched information from one particular country that they choose to the class or students will write a paper on that particular country. The class will focus primarily on the legal systems, police, courts and corrections in each country. Students will gain a better understanding of the United States criminal system by understanding other systems and how our system is both similar to and different from systems in other countries.

Popular Culture, Crime and Justice: Students, you won't find a criminal justice course more relevant to your every day life! Through this course you will learn how to understand what the media tells us and why. You will also be better prepared to analyze films as well as television shows, news broadcasts and newspaper articles. The interaction between crime, criminal justice and the media will be examined from a sociological and historical perspective. We will study how various media- including film, television, newspaper, comic strips, music, and popular fiction- depict crime. Furthermore, we will examine how accurate/inaccurate their depictions are. This course will also look at theoretical approaches to understanding the relationship between crime and media. Primarily, we will analyze the images of crime of crime and the criminal justice system on television and film, asking questions such as:what crimes do the media focus on?, how accurate are their stories?, how does the media portray different aspects of the criminal justice system (i.e., the police, courts, correctional system)?