CRJ 102

The Foundations of Criminal Justice (ETHICS)

Professor Jess Maghan - email: jmaghan@gmail.com

In ways that have rarely been examined and even less often understood, ideas about responsibility affect the operation of the criminal justice system. The assignment and denial of responsibility are among the hottest legal, moral, and political issues in contemporary American society. But for all of the recent talk in politics and business about accountability, the United States remains a one-sided lyno-fault society: People take credit for their accomplishments but disown their mistakes. If Harry Truman were president today, the sign on his desk would probably read: If you play your cards right, the buck never stops. - Jack Kamerman, Negotiating Responsibility in the Criminal Justice System.

Are you sure that your truth and your justice are worth more than the truths and justices of other centuries? — Simone de Beauvoir, All Men are Mortal.

Where does one run...when he is already in the promised land? - Robert L. Dupont, MD

The philosophical foundations of American criminal justice are drawn from the long historical journey of man-as-community. This journey is a chronology of the development of systems of social control, crime, legal institutions and punishment. We will examine a series of debates -- some beginning more than two thousand years ago -- about the ideas of law and justice to formulate the connection between these debates and the everyday operation of our system of criminal justice.

In this context, it is important to remember that the explanation of criminal behavior is not independent of or different from the explanation of noncriminal behavior. Basically, an explanation is a "sensible" relating of some particular phenomenon in question to the whole field of knowledge. It is the on-going development of various theories of crime and criminals. It must be admitted that with the best intentions, and despite much effort, human behavior is still not completely understood. Will it ever be? I think not.

In the true spirit of philosophical inquiry, we must concede that "philosophy is the search for the indefinable." Try it out: what is your philosophy and theory of punishment? A theory is simply part of an explanation. For example, attempts to formulate more satisfactory theories of human behavior in general are the principal content of the whole of human behavior sciences, namely, biology, medicine, psychiatry, psychology, social psychology, and sociology.

It therefore should come as a surprise to no one that current theories of criminality are often questionable and leave much to be desired from the standpoint of adequacy and of scientific validity.

READINGS

The required texts to be used in this course are:

Ethics in Crime and Justice, (3rd Edition), Joycelyn M. Pollock, Belmont, CA: West/Wadsworth Publisher, 1998 [plus INFOTRAC, College Edition http://www.infotrac-college.com/wadsworth]. Four months provided free with purchase of course textbook.

Negotiating Responsibility in the Criminal Justice System, Jack Kamerman, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998.

Additional readings will be assigned in readily available texts and via class handouts.

NOTE: YOU MUST HAVE THE COURSE TEXTBOOKS AND A STANDARD (OXFORD OR WEBSTER’S) DICTIONARY IN CLASS WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

People have to show up in life: your attendance pattern (tardiness/absenteeism) will be factored into your final academic grade determination.

Warning: do not exceed five absentee days in this course semester.

Do NOT bring food into this classroom (seventy-five minutes of abstinence from food and drink is nourishing to the body and soul...especially in a philosophy class...become a true ascetic vis-a-vis a hedonist.

There are three mandatory requirements every student must meet. They are: (1) a mid-term examination, which counts for 30 percent of the final grade; (2) a final examination which counts for 20 percent of the final grade; and (3), a term paper, which counts for 50 percent of the course grade.

The term paper, in the form of a five-page exegesis, is to be developed from the independent reading and interpolation of the responsibility thesis of the 12 sections of the Kamerman book. Moreover, this exegesis is to be developed in direct relation to your understanding ofthe overall course content (lectures, guest speakers, and discussion) and, specifically, your readings of the primary text of the course: Ethics in Crime and Justice.

The optional development of a glossary of words and terms discovered in this class can also be submitted for a consideration of additional full-points on the final course grade. The objective of this glossary development assignment is to enrich your capabilities for analyzing sources of information and to develop the ability for making necessary distinctions of definitions within the "text" and "context" of the course content and subsets of subject matter.

THE GLOSSARY

Spur

In the development of a philosophy and criminal justice glossary, I refer you also to the nine field-specific dictionaries in the UIC Library: the Dictionary of Philosophy; the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology; the Dictionary of Ethics, Theology, & Society; the Criminal Justice Vocabulary; the Criminal Justice Dictionary; Crime Dictionary; Dictionary of American Penology; Dictionary of Sociology; Black’s Law Dictionary; MacMillan Dictionary of Psychology; Encyclopedia of World Crime Dictionary; The Early-Intervention Dictionary; The Police Dictionary and Encyclopedia; The Law Enforcement Vocabulary; Definitions in Convergence Conflict and Alternative Vocabularies.

Reading Schedule