Description
For the past fifty years, the American criminal justice system has been characterized by a nearly unilateral focus on punishment as the way to accomplish public safety. Arguably, tough on crime has been the greatest policy failure in American history. It has failed to reduce crime, recidivism, and victimization and has wasted immense amounts of public funds. We have spent over $1 trillion dollars in building the largest prison system in the world. We incarcerate more individuals than any other country. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world. What have we accomplished? Recidivism rates over 65%. We have also spent over $1 trillion on a failed war on drugs. Today, the vast majority of offenders who cycle through the justice system have a substance use disorder. They also have a recidivism rate of 80%.
While intuitive and logical, punishment does not reduce crime and recidivism because punishment does nothing to mitigate, alter or remedy the primary correlates of criminal offending, things like mental illness, substance abuse, neurodevelopmental and neurocognitive disorders and deficits, poor educational attainment, homelessness, employment problems, etc. The focus of this course is to detail where American criminal justice policy has been,how and why we went down that path, what it accomplished, and importantly, based on what we know today, what is the most reasonable path forward to effectively reduce crime, recidivism, victimization, and money.
The course will be in four sections: 1) an overview of the U.S. criminal justice system; 2) the hows and whys of the past fifty years of American criminal justice policy and what was accomplished; 3) what we know today about the correlates and facilitators of criminal offending; and 4) what is the evidence-based path forward for reducing crime, recidivism, victimization and expense.
This course will be team taught by William Kelly (Sociology) and Robert Pitman (United States District Judge for the Western District of Texas and a seasoned Plan IIteacher). Kelly and Pitman know each other well, and have co-authored two books on criminal justice reform.
Texts/Reading
William R. Kelly, The Future of Crime and Punishment: Smart Policies for Reducing Crime and Saving Money, 2019 Updated Edition, Rowman and Littlefield.
A variety of law review and social science articles to be distributed.
Course Requirements
There will be one take-home midterm essay exam which will constitute 20% of the course grade. There will be a final position paper (15 pages) that will take a particular issue, develop it, and make recommendations. This will constitute 50%. Each student will briefly present their position paper to the class. The presentation is 10%. Class participation will be 20% of the grade.