• Schedule of readings and assignments
• Student evaluation
• Written assignment requirements
• Academic integrity
• Mailing list

Child Abuse and the Legal System, by Inger J. Sagatun and Leonard P. Edwards

A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court, by William Ayers

Youth in Prison: We the People of Unit Four, by M. A. Bortner and Linda M. Williams

Texts are available in the bookstore. Additional readings are available on-line and from the library's reserve desk.

This course is intended to introduce students to the complexity of many issues involved in the treatment of children as both victims and offenders in the criminal justice system. Students are expected to gain detailed knowledge about the various components of both the adult and juvenile justice systems and develop a better understanding of the individuals who are the clients of the system through ethnographic accounts based on observational studies. Students will be asked to think critically about current justice policies related to children and ways in which those policies could be improved.

This course will provide an in-depth exploration of several topics related to the way the justice system addresses issues that have an impact on children, including the victimization of children, the treatment of juveniles who enter the system after committing an offense and the ways in which children are affected when their parents are imprisoned. Four main topics will be covered: the legal response to child abuse, children in juvenile court, children in confinement and children whose parents are incarcerated. The course will first provide an overview of the structure and philosophy of the juvenile justice system and compare that to the adult system. Students will then learn about key issues related to child maltreatment in the United States, including the extent of such abuse, the structure of the systems that respond to accusations of child abuse and the treatment of the child in the process of investigating and resolving such allegations. The second part of the course will provide a portrait of children involved in juvenile court through a case illustration of the court in Chicago. Issues related to the confinement of juvenile offenders will be explored in the third part of the course through an examination of a "model" juvenile prison program in Arizona created after a class action lawsuit was filed against the state for inhumane treatment of the juveniles. Finally, the course will focus on the many issues raised for children when a parent goes to prison.

Students' mastery of the readings and lecture materials presented in class will be evaluated on the basis of their class participation, written assignments, two quizzes, a mid-term and a final exam.

Class participation

Regular class participation is an important element for success in this course. Students should come to each class prepared to respond orally to questions posed about the readings. For example, each chapter in the first text, Child Abuse and the Legal System, contains case examples and discussion questions about those cases. Students must be prepared to answer those discussion questions based on the case examples in the readings. While students can always volunteer to respond to oral questions about the readings, all students will be called on, since these questions are intended to supplement the assessment of student comprehension of the readings that will be based on written examinations.

Four in-class discussion groups will also be held in which students will have an opportunity to discuss issues related to the topics that we are covering in class.

Students with excessive absences may be given a grade of F.

Written assignments

This class will deal with four main topics. Students will write a short paper that includes abstracts of and comments on three research articles about one of the four topics and an op-ed piece on that topic. The choice of topic is up to each student. All written assignments must be typed, double-spaced, with 1" margins all around.

For this assignment, students must choose three articles that document research related to the topic they have chosen and then, for each article, write an abstract summarizing it.  The abstracts will then be followed by a commentary, as described below.  Articles that are simply literature reviews of a topic or in which the authors are presenting their own beliefs or opinion about the effectiveness of certain policies are not acceptable for this assignment. Articles must be in a peer-reviewed journal. One way to be sure that your articles come from a peer-reviewed journal is to use a database like Academic Search Premier (EBSCO Host), which is available through the library's web page, making sure that you click on the "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" option button. Additional assistance in distinguishing academic journals from other periodicals is also available by clicking here.  A partial list of CJ-related peer-reviewed journals is also available, but if a journal you want to use is not on the list, that does not automatically mean that the journal is not peer-reviewed.

For each abstract, begin with a citation of the article at the top of the page, written in the following form (click here for pointers about writing citations):

Single author:

Repucci, N. D. (1999). Adolescent development and juvenile justice. American Journal of Community Psychiatry, 27, 307-326.

More than 1 author:

Caeti, T. J., Hemmens, C., Cullen, F. T., & Burton, V. S., Jr. (2003). Management of juvenile correctional facilities. Prison Journal, 83, 383-405.
 

After giving the citation, you should then summarize the article in one or two paragraphs, including answers to the following questions:

1. What question were the researchers attempting to answer?

2. What method did they utilize to achieve their objective (e.g. did they interview people? if so, who? did they use official records? if so, which ones? what were they measuring?)?

3. What were their findings?

4. What are the implications of the study?

Do this for each of the three articles.  After writing the summaries, you should then provide your own comments about the research, comparing and contrasting the methods, findings and conclusions of the researchers. Questions you might want to think about answering for this part of the assignment include: did the researchers ignore something important? did this information confirm or contradict what you knew about this subject? what other research should be done on this subject? what differences and similarities did you find among the articles?  Your commentary should also include a discussion of the implications the research has for policy.

Op-ed essays appear in newspapers opposite the editorial page (thus the term "op-ed").  They provide a means for people other than the newspaper's editorial staff to express opinions that may not be held by the editorial board of the paper (and thus are another source of the term:  opposing the editorial board or opinion editorial).

Op-ed pieces should be no longer than approximately 750-800 words (about three double-spaced pages) and should forcefully set forth a position about some aspect of the topic chosen. Effective op-ed pieces of this sort not only illuminate a problem but also propose an innovative solution. Your op-ed piece should be informed by the research you read on the topic.

Some tips for writing effective op-ed pieces can be found at different sites on the Internet, including at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and at the web page of a University of Houston law professor. A student whose op-ed piece is published by a major national (e.g. New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post) or municipal (e.g. Philadelphia Inquirer, Newark Star Ledger) newspaper will receive a bonus five points on his or her final grade for the semester. To avoid any misunderstanding about whether a newspaper is considered to be in one of these categories, please check with me before submitting a piece to any newspaper.
 

Assessment of student performance will be computed on the following basis:
 

Quizzes	15% (7.5 % each)
Mid-term exam	15%
Final exam	25%
Papers	25% *
Discussion groups	10%
Class participation	10%

* Abstract assignment = 15%, op-ed = 10%

Make-up exams will be given only if you have obtained my permission to be excused from the actual exam prior to the time of that exam. Late submission of written assignments will be accepted only with my prior consent. Five points may be deducted from the grade for each day beyond the due date that an assignment is turned in late.

Students with disabilities requesting accommodations in the class are encouraged to contact the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities at the Student Life Office, (Armitage 2nd Floor, 225-6043 ), as soon as possible to better ensure that such accommodations are implemented in a timely fashion. Special accommodations will be made upon notification from that office that they are required.

An electronic mailing list, also known as a "listserv," has been established for this class. I will use this listserv as a means of communicating with the entire class, but it can also be used by each of you to communicate with the class as well. All students registered for the course at the start of the semester have been enrolled on the list automatically. Students are subscribed to the e-mail address that Rutgers has on record for them. Please click here for further details about the mailing list including information about obtaining a Rutgers e-mail account if you do not have an account either at Rutgers or with a private Internet service provider such as AOL.

The college's academic integrity policy, which can be found in the college catalogue, will be enforced in this class. Students are also encouraged to read the departmental plagiarism policy, which includes some useful links to other sites that may help you avoid plagiarizing inadvertently. If you are in doubt about what might constitute plagiarism in a written or oral assignment, please check with me.

Assigned readings should be done prior to the date where they appear, especially since students will be questioned in class about them. Additional readings may be distributed in class. The meaning of the abbreviations used in the list below are as follows:

CA = Child Abuse and the Legal System

KJP = A Kind and Just Parent

YP = Youth in Prison

LR = Library reserves

Some readings are on-line; they are shown in blue. To get to them, simply click on the link. Reading them requires Adobe Acrobat, which is available on all of the university's computers. Once the document is displayed in the Acrobat reader, you can print it out. If you are reading a document from home and do not have Adobe Acrobat, you can download a free copy from Adobe.

The schedule outlined below represents my intended timetable, but adjustments may be made during the semester.

Students are responsible for knowing the material in the readings, regardless of whether it is discussed in class or not. In other words, your tests will include materials from class lectures and your readings, unless otherwise noted. Since I will not be able to discuss all of the subjects covered in the texts, you should take careful notes on the readings and ask me about any topics you do not understand and that I have not reviewed in class.