SOCIAL PROBLEMS (SOCIO 360)
One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; the extreme thing is generally the true thing. -Emma Goldman
Course Description: This course critically examines issues of inequality, the family, crime, war, terrorism, and the environment. Discussing these topics will call attention to why we view some social issues as problems, and why we ignore others. This focus encourages students to develop an informed perspective towards such issues that differs from popular perspectives often proffered by the media and governmental authorities, and questions the role of power and ideology in our shared understanding of social problems. (SYLLABUS)
Juvenile Delinquency (Socio 460)
“They live by the meanest code of the meanest streets, a code that reinforces rather than restrains their violent, hair-trigger mentality. In prison or out, the things that super-predators get by their criminal behavior--sex, drugs, money-- are their own immediate rewards. Nothing else matters to them. So for as long as their youthful energies hold out, they will do what comes "naturally": murder, rape, rob, assault, burglarize, deal deadly drugs, and get high.”-John Dilulio 1994
Description: This course critically evaluates the major theoretical perspectives and social responses to juvenile crime and delinquency in the United States SYLLABUS
Corrections (Socio 580)
“The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.”- Nathaniel Hawthorne
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course examines the activities of American correctional systems paying special attention to the historical and political development of Mass Incarceration. SYLLABUS
Sociology of the Criminal Justice System (SOCIO-361)
“The inescapable conclusion is that society secretly wants crime, needs crime, and gains definite satisfaction from the present mishandling of it.” - Karl Menninger-The Crime of Punishment (1968)
Course Description: Sociology of the Criminal Justice System is an examination of the major components of the American criminal justice system and how these reflect and are affected by norms and changes in our society. The course places special emphasis on issues of gender, race/ethnicity, and class within criminal justice. (From the KSU catalog) SYLLABUS
Introduction to Sociology (SOCIO 211)
“Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.”-Marcus Aurelius
Course Description: This class examines the development, structure, and functioning of human groups; social and cultural patterns; and the principal social processes. (From the KSU Catalog) SYLLABUS
POLICE & SOCIETY (SOCIO 361)
Just what I needed, is a college boy. . . . What’s your degree? Sociology? You’ll go far. That’s if you live. . . Just don’t let your college degree get you killed. — Dirty Harry, 1971
Description: This course examines in detail the policing function in society and the role police play in the criminal justice process. SYLLABUS
