Crime, Punishment, and Policing in America
Provides an overview of the law of crime and punishment in the United States, focusing on the interaction between policing practices and the development of the criminal justice system since the late eighteenth century. Examines competing accounts of the history of "mass incarceration" and the debate over whether American criminal justice amounts to an instrument of racial control. Case studies include the death penalty, criminal procedure, counter-terrorism law before and after 9/11, and the long history of American police reform.
Fall 2014 · Race, Crime, and Citizenship in American Law
This seminar looks at key issues in the historical development and current state of modern American criminal justice, with an emphasis on its relationship to citizenship, nationhood, and race/ethnicity. We begin with a range of perspectives on the rise of what is often called "mass incarceration": how did our current system of criminal punishment take shape, and what role did race play in that process? Part Two takes up a series of case studies, including racial disparities in the administration of the death penalty, enforcement of the drug laws, and the regulation of police investigations. The third and final part of the seminar looks at national security policing: the development of a constitutional law governing the intersection of ethnicity, religion, and counter-terrorism, and the impact of counter-terrorism policy on domestic police practices.
Readings
- Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorlindness . The New Press, 2010, pp. 1–57. ISBN: 9781595581037.
- [WS] Chapters 3–6. (Get the gist of pp. 63–128 but read carefully pp. 74–85).
- Allen, Ronald Jay, Joseph L. Hoffmann, et al. Comprehensive Criminal Procedure . 2nd ed. Aspen Publishers, 2011. pp. 1641–43. ISBN: 9780735587809. Selected provisions from the U.S. Constitution.
- [WS] Chapters 7–9.
- Israel, Jerold, and Yale Kamisar, eds. “Materials on Plea Bargaining.” In Criminal Procedure and the Constitution, Leading Supreme Court Cases and Introductory Text . West, 2012, pp. 618–43. ISBN: 9780314281234.
- Gordon Reed, Annette. “U.S. has Yet to Overcome its Tortured Racial Past,” The Financial Times , August 2014.
- Cole, David. Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism . New Press, 2005, pp. 85–104. ISBN: 9781565849389.
- Malek, Alia, ed. Patriot Acts: Narratives of Post–9 / 11 Injustice . McSweeney’s, 2011, pp. 187–206. ISBN: 9781936365388.
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: None U (Spring) 3-0-9 units. HASS-S
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2014
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.