INQ-120 | Justice and Injustice

Full Title: Justice and Injustice

Topic Description:

What impact do changes in modern policing have on our communities? How are issues of poverty and race related to case processing for criminal defendants? What of innocent persons caught up in the system? How has the enterprise of (racialized) mass incarceration affected the lives o those we lock up? Collectively, these questions require confronting the consequences of contemporary criminal justic policy for all members of society. Such queries also require confronting how our own philosophical notions of "justice" and "injustice" fit within these discussions: For whom do we most safeguard or deny a "good life" and in what ways? This course calls for applying an ethical lens to pressing issues faced by the United States criminal justice system. We begin by exploring various philosophical and theoretical frameworks to better understand how "justice and "injustice" might be definced and realized. We then move to consider how these frameworks apply to contemporary problems in the administration of criminal justice in this country by looking to law enforcement, courts, and corrections in turn.

Counts as Global? No

Topic Approved: November 2015