SOC 420
Topics in Criminal Justice
Fall 2025
Topics
- Engage critically with scholarly and non-scholarly sources related to the intersection of technology, justice, and law
- Develop and improve formal/informal writing and research skills
- Present clearly and compellingly on a particular topic at the intersection of criminal justice and tech
Readings
- boyd, d., & Crawford, K. (2012). “Critical questions for big data.” Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 662-679
- Manning, P. (2011). Excerpt from “Technology’s Ways.” In The technology of policing: Crime mapping, information technology, and the rationality of crime control (pp. 63-78). New York: NYU Press
- Bennett Moses, L., & Chan, J. (2019). “Algorithmic prediction in policing: assumptions,
- Brayne, S. (2017). “Big Data Surveillance: The Case of Policing.” American Sociological Review, 82(5): 977-1008
- Chiao, V. (2019). “Fairness, accountability and transparency: Notes on algorithmic decision- making in criminal justice.” International Journal of Law in Context, 15, p. 126-139
- Kehl, D., Guo, P., & Kessler, S. (2017). “Algorithms in the criminal justice system: Assessing the use of risk assessments in sentencing.” Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School. Responsive Communities Initiative, p. 2-36
- Martinho, A. (2024). “Surveying Judges about artificial intelligence: Profession, judicial adjudication, and legal principles.” AI & Society, Open Forum
- Massaro, V.A., Dhar, S., Mir, D., & Ryan, N.C. (2022). “Carceral algorithms and the history of control: An analysis of the Pennsylvania additive classification tool.” Big Data & Society, 9(1)
- Werth, R. (2019). “Risk and punishment: The recent history and uncertain future of actuarial, algorithmic, and ‘evidence-based’ penal techniques.” Sociology Compass, 13(2), 1-19
- Kirk-Werner, G. (2024). “Pains of privacy: Mapping carceral practices onto electronic monitoring.” Theoretical Criminology. Pre-print
- Miller, K. (2014). “Total surveillance, big data, and predictive crime technology: Privacy’s perfect storm.” Journal of Technology Law & Policy, 19(1), 106-145
- Kahveci, Z.U. (2023). “Attribution problem of generative AI: a view from US copyright law.” Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, 18(11), 796–807
- Kuźnicka-Błaszkowska, D., & Kostyuk, N. (2025). “Emerging need to regulate deepfakes in international law: the Russo–Ukrainian war as an example.” Journal of Cybersecurity, 11(1), 1
- Benjamin, R. (2019). “Default discrimination.” In Race after technology (pp. 53-63). Cambridge, UK: Polity
- Eubanks, V. (2017). “High-tech homelessness in the City of Angels.” In Automating inequality: How high-tech tools profile, police, and punish the poor (84-126). New York: St. Martin’s Press
- O’Neil, C. (2017). “Ineligible to Serve: Getting a Job.” In Weapons of Math Destruction. New York: Penguin Random House
- Howson, P., & de Vries, A. (2022). “Preying on the poor? Opportunities and challenges for tackling the social and environmental threats of cryptocurrencies for vulnerable and low-income communities.” Energy Research & Social Science 84, 1-9
- Feldstein, S. (2019). “The road to digital unfreedom: How artificial intelligence is reshaping repression.” Journal of Democracy, 30(1), pp. 40-52
- Monahan, T. (2018). “The image of the smart city: Surveillance protocols and social inequality.” In The Handbook of Cultural Security (pp. 210-227)
- Broeders, D. (2007). “The New Digital Borders of Europe: EU Databases and the Surveillance of Irregular Migrants.” International Sociology, 22(1), 71–92
- Botello, N. A. (2015). “Doing Surveillance Studies in Latin America: The insecurity context.” Surveillance & Society (13)1, 78-90
- Collier, B., et al. (2022). “Influence, infrastructure, and recentering cybercrime policing: Evaluating emerging approaches to online law enforcement through a market of cybercrime services.” Policing and Society, 32(1), 103-124
- Weimann, G., & Vellante, A. (2021). “The Dead Drops of Online Terrorism: How Jihadists Use Anonymous Online Platforms.” Perspectives on Terrorism 15(4), 39-53
- Wang, P., Su, M., & Wang, J. (2021). “Organized crime in cyberspace: How traditional organized criminal groups exploit the online peer-to-peer lending market in China.” The British Journal of Criminology, 61(2), p. 303-324
- Carty, V., & Reynoso Barron, F.G. (2018). “Social movements and new technology: The dynamics of cyber activism in the digital age.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Social Movements, Revolution, and Social Transformation, ed. Berberoglu, B. (pp. 373-397). London: Palgrave
- Brucato, B. (2015). “The new transparency: Police violence in the context of ubiquitous surveillance.” Media and Communication 3(3), 39-55
- Jackson, S.J., & Foucault Welles, B. (2015). “Hijacking #MyNYPD: Social media dissent and networked counterpublics.” Journal of Communication 65(6), 932-952
- van Brakel, R. (2021). How to watch the watchers? Democratic oversight of algorithmic police surveillance in Belgium. Surveillance & Society, 19(2), 228-240
- Moses, Lyria Bennett. "Recurring dilemmas: The law's race to keep up with technological change." U. Ill. JL Tech. & Policy (2007): 239
- Caldwell, Matthew, et al. "AI-enabled future crime." Crime Science 9.1 (2020): 1-13
- Floridi, L. Why the AI Hype is Another Tech Bubble. Philos. Technol. 37, 128 (2024)
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- SOC 420 TOPICS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE · Reading-list link; contents not retrieved ↗
- 2018-Fall-SOC-420-LECTURE-A1 ↗2018
- 2018-Fall-SOC-420-LECTURE-A3 ↗2018
- 2019-Fall-SOC-420-LECTURE-A1 ↗2019
- 2020-Winter-SOC-420-LECTURE-B1 ↗2020
- 2020-Fall-SOC-420-LECTURE-A1 ↗2020
- 2023-Winter-SOC-420-LECTURE-B1 ↗2023
- 2024-Winter-SOC-420-LECTURE-B01 ↗2024
- 2024-Fall-SOC-420-LECTURE-A01 ↗2024
- 2025-Winter-SOC-420-LECTURE-B01 ↗2025
- 2025-Fall-SOC-420-LECTURE-A01 ↗2025
- 2026-Winter-SOC-420-LECTURE-B01 ↗2026
- Additional readings are supplied through the course LMS. Partial automated extraction.
- Additional readings are supplied through the course LMS. Partial automated extraction.