Criminal Courts and the Law in an Era of Mass Incarceration

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to America’s criminal court system and all its institutional stakeholders. We will examine America’s criminal court system from myriad of different perspectives: courts as organizations, courts as social arrangements of professionals, courts as providers of social services and courts as consumer institutions – providing the experience of justice to victims, witnesses, defendants and jurors. We will focus on state courts as well as the federal system.