Sociology of Crime and PunishmentTuesday-Thursday, 2:50-4:10pm

SOC 231-01 — PAC 422 — Fall 2016

Instructor: Kerwin KayeEmail: kkaye@wesleyan.eduOffice: PAC 105Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1-2pm and by appointment

Class Description

This course begins with a critical overview of the rise of mass incarceration in the U.S. since 1973, while situating the present situation within a broader historical context. Following this, we will review a number of theories of crime that sociologists have put forward, looking also at the “uneven crime decline” that U.S. society has experienced since the mid-1990s. This focus constitutes the first half of the course, and takes us up to the Fall Break. Following the break, the course turns toward a series of distinct topics, all coordinated around themes of gender, race, and class. Media images, ideas femininity in relation to street crime, issues pertaining to domestic violence, and experiences of imprisonment will all be addressed. Lastly, we will examine drug treatment courts, the topic of my own research. While a number of analytic questions regarding criminality and crime control will be raised within the course (e.g., how has crime and crime control changed over time, and how can we best account for these changes?), the question of justice within the criminal justice system will remain a close focus throughout.

Course Materials

Materials are available through a Dropbox link:www.dropbox.com/sh/uv5gfdp9zt8y369/AAAnGaBX3UipS6QtWOpbiO4va?dl=0

Please note that any video within Dropbox that is longer than 15 minutes must be downloaded to your computer before viewing.

Course Requirements

There are five requirements for the class:—attend all classes and be prepared to discuss the assigned readings—five short response papers in relation to the reading (1½-2½ pages each)—a short paper analyzing media depiction of crime (5-6 pages)—a mid-term exam (in-class)—a final exam (take home)

Grading

Class attendance and participation: 15%Five short response papers: 5% (each)Short Paper Assignment: 20%Mid-term Exam (in class): 20%Final Exam (take home): 20%

Paper Guidelines

—Response papers must be written on readings that we have not yet discussed, and must be emailed to me by 7pm on the day prior to our discussion. No response papers will be accepted on a given reading after we have discussed it in class. The first response paper is due no later than Monday, September 12th. You select the dates of the other four response papers (two before the midterm, and two after)

—Response papers should address at least 15 pages of reading. If you wish to discuss a reading that is less than 15 pages, you should then discuss two (or more) readings such that you address at least 15 pages of the assigned material

—Response papers should do two things: (1) summarize the author’s argument(2) offer your own opinion/analysis. Response papers will be graded based upon the your

ability to grasp and present an author’s analysis, as well as the depth and insight you display in your own assessment of their work

—All papers should be well organized and proof-read. Please double-space all of your papers, and use one inch margins. Please use Times New Roman (12 point) as your font. If you email me your paper, send it both as an attached file and with the text pasted into the body of the email (in case I have difficulty with the attachment).

—Late papers will suffer as grade deduction as follows: between 15 minutes and 1 hour (3.5%); between 1 hour and 2 hours (5%); between 2 and 24 hours (10%); each additional day follows the same rate of loss (3.5% after the first 15 minutes, up to 10% more each day). Maximum lateness penalty = 50%.

—Please double-space all of your papers, and use one inch margins on all sides. Please also use Times New Roman (12 point) as your font.

—Plagiarism will not be excused; if in doubt, provide a citation.

Use of Electronic Devices within the Classroom

I allow the use of electronic devices only for purposes of taking notes or looking at course materials. Please, no web surfing of any sort (unless requested!).

Special Accommodations / Disability Resources

I am happy to accommodate concerns regarding disabilities. Wesleyan also asks that the following statement be included on all course syllabi:

Wesleyan University is committed to ensuring that all qualified students with disabilities are afforded an equal opportunity to participate in and benefit from its programs and services. To receive accommodations, a student must have a documented disability as defined by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, and provide documentation of the disability. Since accommodations may require early planning and generally are not provided retroactively, please contact Disability Resources as soon as possible.

If you believe that you need accommodations for a disability, please contact Dean Patey in Disability Resources, located in North College, Room 021, or call 860-685-5581 for an appointment to discuss your needs and the process for requesting accommodations.

Schedule Overview

Key Dates

Monday, Sept. 12th (no later than 7pm): First Response Paper dueThursday, October 20th: MidtermTuesday, October 25th: NO CLASS (Fall Break)Thursday, October 27th: Short Paper Assignment DistributedTuesday, November 8th: Election DayFriday, November 11th: Beth Richie talk, 4-6pm (Extra Credit possibility)Thursday, November 24th: NO CLASS (Thanksgiving Break)Tuesday, November 29th: Short Paper Assignment DueTuesday, November 29th: Guest Speaker (Michael Jacobson)Thursday, December 8th: Last Day of classWednesday, December 14th, noon: Final exam

Schedule Overview (cont.)Week 1: September 6th and 8th

Introduction and Overview / The Rise of Mass Incarceration

Week 2: September 13th and September 15th Theories of Mass Incarceration

Week 3: September 20th and September 22nd

Policing in a Time of Crisis

Week 4: September 27th and September 29th Life Under Mass Incarceration

Week 5: October 4th and October 6th

The History of “Crime” / Theories of Crime I: Rational Choice

Week 6: October 11th and October 13th

Theories of Crime II: Anomie / Theories of Crime III: Social Control

Week 7: October 18th and October 20th

Madness, Queers, and Crime / Review / Midterm on October 20th

Week 8: October 25th and October 27th

Death PenaltyNO CLASS October 25th: Fall BreakShort Paper Assignment Distributed

Week 9: November 1st and November 3rd

Media Representations / Central Park Jogger case

Week 10: November 8th and November 10th

Women as Offenders and as VictimsNovember 11th: Extra Credit possibility — talk by Beth Richie, 4-6pm

Week 11: November 15th and November 17th Conceptualizing Domestic Violence

Week 12: November 22nd Imprisonment and Social Control in PrisonsNO CLASS November 24th: Thanksgiving

Week 13: November 29th and December 1st

Guest Speaker: Michael Jacobson / Solitary Confinement

Week 14: December 6th and December 8th Alternatives to Mass Incarceration / Drug Courts

Final Exam due Wednesday, December 14 th by noon (same time as final exam)

Schedule and Assigned ReadingsWeek 1: Introduction, The Rise of Mass Incarceration

Crowding in California Prisons

Tuesday, September 6th:Muhammad, Khahil. 2010. The Condemnation of Blackness, pp. 1-14 (13 pgs)

Thursday, September 8th: Flamm, Michael. 2005. Law and Order, pp. 1-7, 31-8, 51-2, 58-60, 162-3, 173-5,

181-5 (28 pgs)Hinton, Elizabeth. 2016. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, pp. 307-

32 (26 pgs)Kilgore, James. 2015. Understanding Mass Incarceration, pp. 39-48 (10 pgs)

Khahil Muhammad Michael Flamm Elizabeth Hinton James Kilgore

Week 2: Theories of Mass Incarceration

Franklin Zimring Michelle Alexander Loïc Wacquant

Alex Vitale Jonathan Simon

Tuesday, September 13th:First response paper due no later than Monday, September 12th by 7pmAlexander, Michelle. 2011. “The New Jim Crow,” Ohio State Journal of Criminal

Law, 9(1): 7-26 (20 pgs)Wacquant, Loïc. 2009 [2001]. “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet

and Mesh,” Key Readings in Criminology 759-65 (6 pgs)Zimring, Franklin. 2001. “Imprisonment Rates and the New Politics of Criminal

Punishment,” in Mass Imprisonment, pp. 145-9 (5 pgs)

Thursday, September 15th:Vitale, Alex. 2008. City of Disorder, pp. 1-14, 93-102, 113-4, 183-94 (37 pgs)Mohandesi, Salar. 2014. “Who Killed Eric Garner?” Jacobin Magazine,

17December: <www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/who-killed-eric-garner>.Simon, Jonathan. 2001. “Fear and Loathing in Late Modernity,” in Mass

Imprisonment, pp. 15-25 (11 pgs)

Week 3: Policing in a Time of Crisis

The Evolution of Police Riot Gear, New York Times, 4December2011

Tuesday, September 20th:Vitale, Alex. 2008. City of Disorder, pp. 115-43 (29 pgs)Camp, Jordon and Christina Heatherton. 2016. “Asset Stripping and Broken

Windows Policing on LA’s Skid Row,” in Policing the Planet, pp. 141-9 (9 pgs)

Heatherton, Chrinstina. 2016. “Policing the Crisis of Indigenous Lives,” in Policing the Planet, pp. 109-19 (11 pgs)

Ackerman, Spencer. 2015. “The Disappeared: Chicago Police Detain Americans at Abuse-Ridden ‘Black Site,’” The Guardian, 24February: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site

Balko, Radley. 2016: “The Justice Department’s Stunning Report on the Baltimore Police Department,” Washington Post, 10August: www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/08/10/the-justice-departments-stunning-report-on-the-baltimore-police-department

Berman, Mark and Wesley Lowry. 2015. “The 12 Key Highlights from the DOJ’s Scathing Ferguson Report,” 4March: www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/03/04/the-12-key-highlights-from-the-dojs-scathing-ferguson-report

Lopez, German. 2016. “Police Shootings in the U.S.: Nine Things You Should Know,” www.vox.com/cards/police-brutality-shootings-us/police-abuse-cases

Golash-Boza, Tanya. 2016. “The Parallels between Mass Incarceration and Mass Deportation,” Journal of World-Systems Research, 22(2): 484-509 (20 pgs)

Thursday, September 22nd:Skolnick, Jerome. 2010. “A Sketch of the Policeman’s Working Personality,” in

Race, Ethnicity, and Policing, pp. 15-31 (14 pgs)Harkin, Diarmaid. 2015. “The Police and Punishment: Understanding the Pains of

Policing,” Theoretical Criminology, 19(1): 43-58 (11 pgs)Sexton, Jared. 2007. “Racial Profiling and the Societies of Control,” in Warfare in

the American Homeland, pp. 197-218 (16 pgs)

Week 4: Life Under Mass Incarceration

Harrisburg, PA

Tuesday, September 27th:Fine, Michelle et al. 2003. “‘Anything Can Happen with Police Around’: Urban

Youth Evaluate Strategies of Surveillance in Public Places,” Journal of Social Issues, pp. 141-58 (15 pgs)

Rios, Victor. 2006. “The Hyper-Criminalization of Black and Latino Male Youth in the Era of Mass Incarceration,” Souls, 8(2): 40-54 (13 pgs)

Gowan, Teresa. 2002. “The Nexus: Homelessness and Incarceration in Two American Cities,” Ethnography, 3: 500-34 (30 pgs)

Tang, Eric. 2000. “State Violence, Asian Immigrants, and the ‘Underclass,’” in States of Confinement, pp. 230-44 (14 pgs)

Thursday, September 29th:Goffman, Alice. 2009. “On the Run: Wanted Men in a Philadelphia Ghetto,”

American Sociological Review, 74(June): 339-57 (18 pgs)Coates, Ta-Nehisi. 2015. “Letter to My Son,” The Atlantic Monthly, 1September:

www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/tanehisi-coates-between-the-world-and-me/397619/

James, Osamudia. 2016. “Trump Sees Black America as a Dystopian Hellhole. So Do Most White People.” Washington Post, 26August: www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/26/trump-sees-black-america-as-a-dystopian-hellhole-so-do-most-white-people

McIntosh, Peggy. 1998. “White Privilege, Color and Crime,” from Images of Color, Images of Crime (skim essay — look more carefully at the list on pages 2-4)

Week 5: The History of “Crime” / Theories of Crime I: Rational Choice

Tuesday, October 4th:Michalowski, Raymond. 1985. Order, Law, and Crime, pp. 49-84 (32 pgs)Foucault, Michel. 2006 [1975]. “The Body of the Condemned,” from Discipline

and Punish (in Prison Readings), pp. 18-21 (4 pgs)Whitehouse, David. 2014. “The Origins of the Police,” online publication:

https://worxintheory.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/origins-of-the-police (18)

Thursday, October 6th:Beccaria, Cesare. 1994 [1764]. “On Crimes and Punishments,” in Classics of

Criminology, Second Edition, pp. 277-86 (8 pgs)Cornish, Derek and Ronald Clarke. 2006 [2001]. “The Rational Choice

Perspective,” in The Essential Criminology Reader, pp. 18-29 (11 pgs)Katz, Jack. 1988. Seductions of Crime, pp. 178-87 (10 pgs)Robinson, Laurie and Jeff Slowikowski. 2011. “Scary and Ineffective,” The

Baltimore Sun, January 31 (2 pgs)Kleiman, Mark. 2010. “The Outpatient Prison,” The American Interest,

(March/April), pp. 45-51 (7 pgs)Kelling, George and Bratton, William. 2012 [1998]. “Declining Crime Rates,” in

Taking Sides, pp. 288-97 (9 pgs)

Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) Michel Foucault Mark Kleiman

Week 6: Theories of Crime II: Anomie / Theories of Crime III: Social Control

Tuesday, October 11th: Durkheim, Emile. 1964 [1893]. The Division of Labor in Society, The Free Press:

New York; pp. 70-80, 87-9 (14 pgs)Shaw, Clifford and Henry McKay. 2011 [1942]. “Juvenile Delinquency and

Urban Areas,” in Criminological Theory: Past to Present, pp. 98-104 (6 pgs)

Anderson, Elijah. 1994. “The Code of the Street,” The Atlantic Monthly (May), pp. 81-94 (8 pgs)

Merton, Robert. 1999 [1938]. “Social Structure and Anomie,” in Criminological Theory: Past to Present, pp. 123-9 (7 pgs)

Bourgois, Philippe. 1996. “In Search of Masculinity,” British Journal of Criminology, 36(3): 412-27 (14 pgs)

Covington, Jeanette. 2010. Crime and Racial Constructions, pp. 137-41 (5 pgs)

Thursday, October 13th:Lemert, Edwin. 2011 [1952]. “Primary and Secondary Deviance,” in

Criminological Theory: Past to Present, pp. 249-52 (4 pgs)Chambliss, William. 1973. “The Saints and the Roughnecks,” in Deviance: The

Interactionist Perspective, pp. 186-94 (9 pgs)Braithwaite, John. 2011 [1989]. “Crime, Shame, and Reintegration,” in

Criminological Theory: Past to Present, pp. 253-61 (9 pgs)Currie, Elliot. 1997. “Crime in Market Society,” in Criminological Theory: Past

to Present, pp. 288-300 (12 pgs)Websdale, Neil. 2001. Policing the Poor, pp. 150-9 (10 pgs). Rios, Victor. 2012. “Stealing a Bag of Potato Chips and Other Crimes of

Resistance,” Contexts, 11(1): 48-53 (5 pgs)Parenti, Christian. 2000. “Crime as Social Control,” Social Justice, 27(3): 43-9 (6

pgs)

Émile Durkheim Robert Merton Elijah Anderson John Braithwaite

Week 7: Madness, Queers, and Crime / Review / Midterm

Tuesday, October 18th: Metzl, Jonathan and Kenneth MacLeish. 2015. “Mental Illness, Mass Shootings,

and the Politics of American Firearms,” American Journal of Public Health, 105(2): 240-9 (8 pgs)

Braswell, Harold. 2014. “Why do Police Keep Seeing a Person’s Disability as a Provocation?” Washington Post, 25August: www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/25/people-with-mental-disabilities-get-the-worst-and-least-recognized-treatment-from-police

Ben-Moshe, Liat. 2014. “Prisons as the ‘New Asylums,’” Asylum, (Winter): 16-9 (3 pgs)

Ware, Wesley. 2011. “Rounding Up the Homosexuals,” in Captive Genders, pp. 77-84 (7 pgs)

Center for American Progress. 2016. “Unjust: How the Broken Criminal Justice System Fails LGBT People of Color,” SKIM ONLY

Catch-up / Review

Thursday, October 20th:Midterm Exam

Week 8: Death Penalty

Tuesday, October 25th:NO CLASS — Fall break!

Thursday, October 27th:Short Paper Assignment DistributedGarland, David. 2010. Peculiar Institution, pp. look at charts on page 41-2, 202;

read 47-51, 215-48, 253-55, 285-313

Week 9: Media Representations / Central Park Jogger

Tuesday, November 1st:Stabile, Carol. 2006. White Victims, Black Villains, pp. 153-74 (22 pgs)Critcher, Chas. 2011. “For a Political Economy of Moral Panics,” Crime, Media,

Culture, pp. 259-75 (15 pgs)Valverde, Mariana. 2006. Law and Order, pp. 96-107, 115-31 (29 pgs)

Thursday, November 3rd:Schanberg, Sydney. 2002. “A Journey Through the Tangled Case of the Central

Park Jogger,” Village Voice, November 19 (9 pgs)Hancock, Lynnell. 2003. “Wolf Pack: The Press and the Central Park Jogger,”

Columbia Journalism Review, 41(5): 38-42 (5 pgs)Smith, Valerie. 1994. “Split Affinities: The Case of Interracial Rape,” in

Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences, pp. 155-70 (14 pgs)

Little, Rivka Gewirtz. 2002. “Rage Before Race: How Feminists Faltered on the Central Park Jogger Case,” Village Voice, October 15 (3 pgs)

Little, Rivka Gewirtz. 2002. “Across 110th Street: Changed Lives Among Central Park Five Family Members,” Village Voice, November 5 (3 pgs)

Characters from Grand Auto Theft III

Week 10: Women as Offenders and as Victims

Tuesday, November 8th: (Election Day)Smart, Carol. 2008. “Criminological Theory: Its Ideology and Implications

Concerning Women,” in Gender and Crime: A Reader, pp. 5-15 (10 pgs)Pollock, Joycelyn, and Sareta Davis. 2005. “The Continuing Myth of the Violent

Female Offender,” Criminal Justice Review, 30(1): 5-29 (22 pgs)Ferraro, Kathleen and Angela Moe. 2003. “Mothering, Crime, and Incarceration,”

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 32(9): 9-40 (29 pgs)Odem, Mary. 1992. “Fallen Women and Thieving Ladies: Historical Approaches

to Women and Crime in the United States” (book review), Law & Social Inquiry, 17(2): 351-61 (11 pgs)

Thursday, November 10th:Esther Madriz. Nothing Bad Happens to Good Girls: Fear of Crime in Women’s

Lives, pp. 10-19, 34-41, 67-93, 147-50 (49 pgs)LaChance, Naomi. 2016. “California Isn’t Sure How to Fix Sexual Assault

Problem without Adding to Mass Incarceration,” The Intercept, 31August: https://theintercept.com/2016/08/31/california-isnt-sure-how-to-fix-sexual-assault-problem-without-adding-to-mass-incarceration/

November 11th: Extra Credit possibility — talk by Beth Richie, 4-6pm

Week 11: Conceptualizing Domestic Violence

Tuesday, November 15th:Bumiller, Kristen. 2008. In An Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriated

the Feminist Movement Against Sexual Violence, pp. 1-15 (15 pgs)Coker, Donna. 2001. “Crime Control and Feminist Law Reform in Domestic

Violence Law: A Critical Review,” Buffalo Criminal Law Review, 4: 801-60. No need to read footnotes (36 pgs)

Critical Resistance and Incite!. 2016. “Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex,” in Color of Violence, pp. 223-6 (4 pgs)

Thursday, November 17th:Sokoloff, Natalie, and Ida Dupont. 2005. “Domestic Violence at the Intersections

of Race, Class, and Gender,” Violence Against Women, 11: 38-64 (22 pgs)Koyama, Emi. 2016. “Disloyal to Feminism,” in Color of Violence, pp. 208-22

(15 pgs)Dutton, Mary Ann. 1996. “Critique of the ‘Battered Woman Syndrome,” National

Online Resource Center on Violence Against Women (4 pgs)

Week 12: Imprisonment and Social Control in Prisons

Tuesday, November 22nd:Marquart, James and Ben Crouch. 1998 [1985]. “Judicial Reform and Prisoner

Control,” in Incarcerating Criminals, pp. 70-81 (11 pgs)Trammell, Rebecca. 2012. Enforcing the Convict Code, pp. 19-40 (22 pgs)Bauer, Shane. 2016. “My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard,” Mother Jones,

41(4), July/August: 18-31, 57-63 (17 pgs)Meronek, Toshio. 2013. “The Invisible Punishment of Prisoners with

Disabilities,” The Nation, 23July: www.thenation.com/article/invisible-punishment-prisoners-disabilities/

Harbin, Ami. 2015. “Prisons and Palliative Politics,” in Death and Other Penalties, pp. 158-73 (16 pgs)

Schussel, George. 2016(?). “After Prison” and “Comments on Probation and Halfway House,” Prison Justice for America: http://prison-justice.org/news-editorials/173-after-prison-halfway-house-and-probation and http://prison-justice.org/news-editorials/176-comments-on-probation-and-halfway-house

Thursday, November 24th:NO CLASS — Thanksgiving

Week 13: Guest Speaker: Michael Jacobson / Solitary Confinement

Tuesday, November 29th:Short Paper Assignment DueGuest Speaker: Michael JacobsonJacobson, Michael. 2005. Downsizing Prisons, pp. 131-72 (42 pgs)(Note: this reading is likely to be modified)

Thursday, December 1st:Kilgore, James. 2015. Understanding Mass Incarceration, pp. 48-51 (3 pgs)Henningsen, Rodney, et al. 2011 [1999]. “Supermax Prisons: Panacea or

Desperation?” in Correctional Contexts, pp. 78-85 (7 pgs)Stickrath, Thomas, and Gregory Bucholtz. 2006 [2003]. “Supermaximum

Security Prisons are Necessary,” in America’s Prisons: Opposing Viewpoints, pp. 89-92 (4 pgs)

Rhodes, Lorna. 2002. “Psychopathy and the Face of Control in Supermax,” Ethnography, 3(4): 442-66 (17 pgs)

Rhodes, Lorna. 2005. “Pathological Effects of the Supermaximum Prison,” American Journal of Public Health, 95(10): 1692-5 (4 pgs)

Abdur’Rahman, Abu Ali. 2015. “Statement on Solitary Confinement,” in Death and Other Penalties, pp. 227-9 (3 pgs)

Week 14: Alternatives to Mass Incarceration / Drug Courts

Tuesday, December 6th:Goldstein, Dana. 2015. “How to Cut the Prison Population by 50 Percent,” online

publication: www.themarshallproject.org/2015/03/04/how-to-cut-the-prison-population-by-50-percent

Gottschalk, Marie. 2015. “The Folly of Neoliberal Prison Reform,” online publication: https://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/marie-gottschalk-neoliberal-prison-reform-caught

Marshall, Tony. 2009 [1998]. “Restorative Justice: An Overview,” in Key Readings in Criminology, pp. 719-25 (6 pgs)

Morris, Allison. 2009 [2002]. “Critiquing the Critics: A Brief Response to Critics of Restorative Justice,” in Key Readings in Criminology, pp. 732-7 (5 pgs)

Robinson, Paul. 2013. “The Virtues of Restorative Processes, the Vices of ‘Restorative Justice,’” in A Restorative Justice Reader, pp. 384-93 (9 pgs)

Okazawa-Rey, Margo and Gwyn Kirk. 2000. “Maximum Security,” Social Justice, 27(3): 120-32 (11 pgs)

Ben-Moshe, Liat. 2013. “The Tension between Abolition and Reform,” in The End of Prisons, pp. 83-92 (10 pgs)

Lopez, German. 2016. “Riots are Destructive, Dangerous, and Scary — but Can Lead to Serious Social Reforms,” Vox, 15August: www.vox.com/2015/4/30/8518681/protests-riots-work

Thursday, December 8th:Tiger, Rebecca. 2011. “Drug Courts and the Logic of Coerced Treatment,”

Sociological Forum, 26(1): 169-82 (12 pgs)Optional: Kaye, Kerwin. 2013. “Rehabilitating the ‘Drugs Lifestyle’: Criminal

Justice, Social Control, and the Cultivation of Agency,” Ethnography, 14(2): 207-32 (43 pgs).

Final exam due: Wednesday, December 14 th , 12noon