Student evaluation               Readings                   Listserv

Instructor:          Jane Siegel, Ph.D.
Office:               363 Armitage
Phone:               (856) 225-6143
E-mail:              jasiegel@camden.rutgers.edu
Home page:      http://crab.rutgers.edu/~jasiegel/

Office hours:      Tuesday and Thursday, 11:00 - 12:30, and by appointment.

Crime Profiles: The Anatomy of Dangerous Persons, Places, and Situations - 2^nd Edition, by Terance D. Miethe and Richard McCorkle

In Their Own Words: Criminals on Crime: An Anthology - 2^nd Edition, edited by Paul Cromwell

Both books can be purchased at the bookstore. Additional readings will be available through the library's reserve system.

The goals of this course are for students to:

• Gain an appreciation of the diversity of behaviors encompassed by the term "crime;"
• Understand the constituent elements of crimes from a legal perspective and the social processes that contribute to the designation of particular acts as "crimes;"
• Become familiar with the characteristics, dynamics and trends of a variety of offenses;
• Learn about theoretical explanations for specific types of offending; and
• Enhance their understanding of qualitative and quantitative methods of research related to crime

"Varieties of Crime" will provide an overview of several different offenses, including crimes of violence such as homicide and rape, property crimes, occupational crimes and public order offenses such as prostitution and drug offenses. An overarching goal of the course is to stimulate thought about the adequacy of criminological explanations about the causes of crime, given the diversity of behaviors encompassed in the term "crime." The course will include a discussion of both the legal definition of crime and the subjective nature of the designation of certain behaviors as criminal.

The texts for this course reflect two different methodological traditions in criminology. Crime Profiles provides a portrait of offenses based largely on data gleaned from quantitative research, police reports and victim surveys. These statistics enable the authors to present a clear overview of what we know about the various types of offenses to be studied, including the incidence of each offense, trends in the commission of such crimes, and the demographic patterns and situational characteristics of offending and victimization. Implications for crime prevention efforts will also be covered as part of our discussion of each type of crime. The descriptive material presented in Crime Profiles will be enhanced by the writings in the second text, In Their Own Words. In this text, students will have an opportunity to read what actual offenders say about their crimes. The material comes from ethnographic or field accounts obtained by researchers who utilized a variety of methods to provide accounts of crime that include insights into the offenders' motivations, perceptions, rationalizations and their decision-making approaches.

A listserv has been established for this class. I will use it when needed to communicate messages to the entire class, which each student will receive as an e-mail message. Students can also utilize the listserv to pose questions or comments to the entire class. Instructions on subscribing to the listserv can be found by clicking here.

Students' mastery of the readings and lecture materials presented in class will be evaluated on the basis of their performance on two exams, a final, written and oral assignments, and class participation.

Written/oral assignments

Students will complete two written assignments, one of which will be presented orally in class as well. For all written assignments, grammar, including spelling, and style will be a factor in a student's grade.

News journal assignment

"If it bleeds it leads" is said to be the byword of many local TV news programs and, indeed, crime stories are regular features on the news. Most people hearing these stories share similar reactions: sympathy for the victim, sadness, disgust, incredulity, anger, fear or bewilderment.

In this class, you will learn much more about several different crimes than the simple fact that they happen and that someone gets hurt as a result. Your task with this assignment is to keep a weekly "news journal," consisting of an article from a newspaper or magazine about the various types of crime we will cover in the course and a written reaction to each article. Your reaction should move beyond just the emotional and include a discussion of how this particular crime either is consistent with or differs from what you have learned about that offense type. DO NOT simply rehash or summarize the article in your reaction paper. Your job is to think about the event that is described and use that as a springboard for intelligent commentary about the crime.

This assignment is intended to be a weekly one, starting with the week of October 1, when we begin our study of homicide. The article that you choose for a given week should be the one that we are studying at that time. Thus, the article for the week of October 1 would be about homicide, for October 9 about aggravated assault, etc. There will be ten articles total. One point will be deducted for each article that is downloaded more than two weeks after the week designated for that offense type.

Reactions should be typed, double-spaced, with 1" margins all around. At the top of each reaction, write the date, name and source of the article. Articles and reactions should be bound into some type of binder or notebook, in chronological order, with a copy of the article followed immediately by the reaction page for that particular article.

At the end of the semester, you will choose what you consider to be your best reaction paper and designate it as one that will be graded. The news journal itself will count for 15% (15 points) of your final grade for the class; 10 of those points will be earned by completing the entire news journal correctly, which means having 10 different articles and 10 typed reactions, bound in correct order in a binder. The proportion of the remaining five points that you receive will be determined by the quality of the designated reaction paper. A well-written (i.e. lucid, grammatically correct, without spelling errors, well-organized) paper will earn all five points.

The easiest way to locate articles is to log on to one of the library's on-line databases, such as Dow-Jones Interactive or Lexis-Nexis. Type in a search term and a list of articles (some suitable, others not) will be displayed. You can either save the article and then print it out using any word processing program or print it out directly from the computer.

Assignment #2

Each student will choose a particular offense and read two recent empirical studies about the offense that have been published in peer-reviewed academic journals. A link to a list of peer-reviewed journals is on my home page. All students should check with me about the acceptability of their articles as soon as they have identified them to avoid any question about their suitability for the assignment.

The paper should be no more than five pages and should include the following:

1. A photocopy of the abstract of each article, attached to your paper

2. A summary of each article that includes:

• A description of the research question that the investigators sought to answer, or the purpose of the study
• A description of the method utilized to investigate the question, including a description of the sample and how the researchers obtained the sample
• A summary of the findings and the conclusions that the author(s) reached

Each student will make a brief oral presentation about the articles, timed to coincide with the completion of the class's discussion of the particular crime he or she investigated. Thus, due dates for this assignment will be staggered. Students will choose their topic at the beginning of the semester on a sign-up sheet.

All written assignments must be typed, double-spaced, with 1" margins all around. Citations should follow the style guidelines of the American Sociological Association or the American Psychological Association. The department has a web page with links to sites that provide guidance on how to format written materials to comply with those guidelines.

Oral presentations should be brief (approximately five minutes) and should not consist simply of a reading of your paper.

Papers will be judged on the basis of both content and the quality of the writing. If you need assistance with writing skills, I urge you to contact the Learning Resource Center in Armitage Hall (room 231) for help.

Class participation

Class participation is an important component of this course. Assigned readings should be done prior to the date where they appear on the syllabus so that you are prepared to discuss the readings and answer questions about them in class. In addition, questions will be posted periodically to the class listserv that will require you to obtain additional information from the Internet. Students should be prepared to answer those questions orally in class.

Unexcused absences, chronically arriving late or being obviously unprepared for class will result in a loss of points for class participation.

Student performance will be computed on the following basis:
 

News journals	15%
Journal articles assignment	15%
Tests	30% (15% each)
Final	30%
Class participation	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 permitted only with my prior consent, or permitted with a penalty, depending on the reason for lateness.

The college's academic integrity policy, which can be found in the college catalogue, will be enforced in this class. Plagiarism is considered an extremely serious offense that can result in a tarnished official record or even expulsion from the university. Students are encouraged to read our department's 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 an assignment, please check with me.

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 text, 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.

Articles referred to below by title are available through the library's reserve system. The abbreviations in the schedule below refer to the following:

CP Crime Profiles

ITOW In Their Own Words
 

WEEK OF:	TOPIC	READINGS
9/4	Constituent legal elements of crime	A Layperson's Guide to Criminal Law - Ch. 2 (on reserve)
9/11              9/13	Hate crimes   Social construction of crime     LIBRARY ORIENTATION Meet at Classrooms A and B downstairs in Robeson Library at 9:30 for orientation on use of library and on-line resources	"A Policymaker's Guide to Hate Crimes" - Introduction plus Ch. 1-4 Crime and Criminals- Ch. 2 and 3 (at library reserve desk)  (On electronic reserve as "Crime by Any Other Name" and "State, the Law, and the Definition of Behavior as Criminal or Delinquent")
9/18	Introduction to typologies and ethnographic research	CP - Ch. 1 ITOW - Ch. 1
9/25	Criminal lifestyles and the decision making of criminals	ITOW - Ch. 2, 3 and 4
10/2	Homicide and aggravated assault	CP - Ch. 2
10/9	Homicide and aggravated assault (cont'd.)	"The Code of the Streets" "What Can We Learn from Data Disaggregation? The Case of Homicide and African Americans"
10/16    10/18	Sexual assault Test # 1 - All readings and lecture material through 10/11	CP - Ch. 3
10/23	Sexual assault (cont'd.) Robbery	ITOW - Ch. 14  CP - Ch. 4
10/30	Robbery (cont'd.) Burglary	ITOW - Ch. 12, 13 CP - Ch. 5
11/5	N.B.: Class will attend a live debate on hate crimes at Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia from 4:15 - 6:00 P.M. The debate will be taped as part of the National Public Radio series "Justice Talking" and will be aired nationwide at a later date. Locally, "Justice Talking" airs on WHYY, 91.0 FM, on Monday nights at 10:00, with a rebroadcast on Wednesday at noon.
11/6          11/8	Decision making of burglars Shoplifting Persistent thieves   NO CLASS	ITOW - Ch. 5 ITOW - Ch. 6 "Identity, Lifestyle and Character" - Ch. 4 of Great Pretenders: Pursuits and Careers of Persistent Thieves (on reserve)
11/13    11/15	Motor vehicle theft Test # 2 - Readings and lectures from 10/16 through 11/13	CP - Ch. 6 ITOW - Ch. 7
11/20    11/22	Occupational and organizational crime NO CLASS - THANKSGIVING	CP - Ch. 7 ITOW - Ch. 11
11/27	Public order crimes: drugs, prostitution, gambling, vandalism, etc.	CP - Ch. 8 ITOW - Ch. 19 "Players and Ho's"
12/4    12/6	Drug dealing News journals due	ITOW - Ch. 18, 20 and 21
12/11	Summing up: What are the commonalities among crimes?	CP - Ch. 9
12/18	FINAL EXAM - 2:00 - 5:00