Applying course concepts to a contemporary issue – Seattle Police Department disproportionately targets Blacks and Indigenous people for stop and search
You are required to read the instruction and answer Essay 2. “Analyzing a contemporary issue through course concepts.”You must follow every single instruction while writing your two page paper. Do not bid if you have not specialized in Sociology
Essay Assignment
Write TWO short essays. Each essay should be 2-3 pages long, double-spaced.
Essay 1: Applying course concepts to a contemporary issue
Your aunt works for the Seattle City Council, and she just read this article (Links to an external site.) discussing research showing that the Seattle Police Department disproportionately targets Blacks and Indigenous people for stop and search. She heard that you are taking a course on criminal justice issues, and she asked you for help to understand why these disparities exist.
Write your aunt a memo, in which you explain how sociologists have explained such racial disparities in stop and search practices. If you use sociological concepts, define them (your aunt has never taken a sociology class!). On the basis of your explanations, give her a sense of what policies the City Council might consider, in order to reduce racial disparities in policing.
You can format your memo in the way you like: it can be a letter (“Dear Auntie…”) or a more formal memo, written in a way that she could forward to colleagues at the City Council for example.
Essay 2: Analyzing a contemporary issue through course concepts
In an analytical essay, discuss Joe Biden’s criminal justice platform (Links to an external site.), using concepts and theories we learned about in class. Your essay should
- Briefly describe the political orientation of Biden’s proposals: are they closer to the “crime control” rhetoric, or the “social welfare” one? In what ways?
- Based on the course material, explain Biden’s previous endorsement of tough-on-crime policies (Links to an external site.). What might explain that he endorsed these policies in the 1980s and 1990s? To do this, you should draw on the theoretical perspectives we learned about in class (you can rely on just one perspective, or on more than one).
- Discuss possible reasons why Biden shifted his policy position recently. Again here, you should draw on the theoretical perspectives we studied in the module on criminal justice expansion, and discuss how these perspectives can help explain Biden’s position today. You don’t need to have all the answers, what matters is raising the right questions (eg. Marxian scholars would pay attention to X and ask Y. they might explain Biden’s recent shift by drawing attention to Z).
- End your essay with reflections on the potential of Biden’s proposals: do you think the proposals will effectively reduce mass incarceration? Why or why not? Specifically: what obstacles might the Biden administration face when attempting to pass these policies? Again, for this section, you should draw on the course material.
Tips for writing the essays
- Read the essay prompt carefully
- Read the article(s) linked in the prompt. As you read, underline or highlight the points that will be relevant when you address the essay questions.
- Go back to your course notes and figure out which concepts or theories will help you write the essay.
- If needed, go back to the readings you will rely on most.
- Once you have a good idea of what you want to argue, write a detailed outline of your essay. The outline should include all the issues you must address (return to the essay prompt to make sure).
- Write the essay. Each essay should include
- An introduction, where you introduce the topic and the main questions you will address in the essay.
- The body of the essay – this is where you address the issues in the essay prompt. This part can be divided into sections, but it doesn’t have to.
- A conclusion, where you wrap up and summarize the main argument of your essay
You do not need to use a formal citation style or to include a bibliography, but you must always reference the sources you use in your essays
- DO cite authors’ names or theoretical perspectives when you describe their argument,
- eg: “Charles Epp and his colleagues argue in Pulled Over that…”
- eg: “Marxian sociologists like Loic Wacquant argue that, to understand criminal justice expansion, we must pay attention to…”
- DON’T use concepts without saying who coined or defined them
- Eg: “Workfare is xyz” à you must mention that Loic Wacquant coined and defined this term.
Grading checklist
A good or excellent essay (90-100)
- Addresses all the points included in the prompt
- Is organized with an introduction, a body, and a conclusion
- Develops a clearly spelled argument, which draws on course concepts and theories, and effectively connects them to the issue being analyzed
- Defines sociological concepts accurately when needed
- Supports the arguments made with material from the course
An adequate essay (80-89)
- Addresses all the points included in the prompt
- Is organized with an introduction, a body, and a conclusion
- Develops an argument, which draws on course concepts and theories, but the connection to the articles is not always clearly spelled out
- Defines some (but not all) of the sociological concepts accurately
- Sometimes (but not always) supports the arguments made with material from the course
An insufficient essay (<80)
- Is missing some of the points included in the prompt
- Is missing an argument
- Doesn’t draw on course concepts, or does so in a way that misunderstands the concept or theory
- Does not define the sociological concepts used, or does so inaccurately
- Makes arguments solely based on the student’s personal opinion without supporting them with course material
Note:
You do not need to draw on each module in each of the essays. In contrast to the quiz, this assignment is not meant for me to assess how much of the course material you know. Rather, I want to see how well you’re able to use one piece of the course material to think through real-world problems. So try to focus on the material most directly related to the essay question and go in depth with it: make sure you define key concepts and explain how they apply to that particular issue. For example, it’s totally okay, for the letter to your aunt, to focus only on Epp’s reading (institutionalized practices). You may rely on one of the earlier readings to give your aunt an idea about how these policing practices are embedded in a larger criminal justice expansion that had X causes, but don’t spend all your (short) essay on this, and make sure you spend most of the essay on the readings/concepts that most directly help you address the question of racial profiling in policing.
In the same way, the essay analyzing Biden’s policies can rely squarely on criminal justice expansion, and not draw on the other modules. The most important thing is to explain the theories and concepts well and to explain how they can help us understand Biden’s policy proposals in the 80s and today.
In other words, when I say “use sociological perspectives” I don’t mean just the classical theories we started with, everything we learned and read in this class is sociological.
