The class serves as an introduction to the Crime, Law and Justice Studies minor through an interdisciplinary approach. The course uses approaches from history, sociology, ethnography, critical theory and literature to examine the sequence of events that occur in the criminal legal system to address the following questions and topics: Is our system just? What is crime, and what are some theories that claim to explain "criminality"? How did the US criminal legal process and procedures emerge, and how do they function today? What is the history of policing and the police, and what are current issues that shape policing today? What happens once a person is caught up in the criminal legal process, and what role do judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and forensics play in that process? In the small percentage of cases that proceed to trial, what happens, and what are the options for the person? What happens after, and do prisons administer just punishment? What about after prison?
The driving question of the course is what it means to have and create a just system and for whom, and how does race, gender, sexuality and other categories of identity shape how a person experiences this sequence of often inevitable events. To understand complex issues like Crime, Law and Justice, we will use numerous case studies and stories such as Kalief Browder, a 16-year who spent years in Rikers Island Prison without a conviction, and whose case spurred the movement to close Rikers. We look at how judges and prosecutors make decisions in a Cleveland Courthouse, how one man experienced the death penalty, and read short stories that imagine societies with different ways of administering justice. This class will have multiple class visits including a Juvenile Prison superintendent, a police officer, people who have been in prison, a lawyer with the Clemency project and others.
What is the relationship between the university and the prison? How does college in prison raise questions of authority, power and privilege? This is an experiential learning class that combines involvement in a college program at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) and academic classes and readings. Students read texts on the history of prisons, theories of punishment, higher education in prison, and how the intersection of race, gender and sexuality impact the experience of incarceration and education in prison. Students also participate as research partners and study hall co-learners with students at the prison in collaboration with the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound (FEPPS) that works with the university to offer a BA degree to students in prison. Through collaboration with students in prison, students in this class will gain knowledge about the challenges and benefits of the liberal arts in prison.
Prisons worldwide are widely acknowledged as institutions that impose strict limits on individual autonomy and mobility. Yet people's freedoms are regulated through spatial and disciplinary technologies that exceed the prison. This course will explore
how prisons and carceral systems are interconnected and operate globally. We will ask questions such as why are young women in India's university hostels subject to routine surveillance and "curfew" hours? How are state energy projects for environmental conservation implicated in the confinement of marginalized fishing communities in Rwanda? To explore these we will look at how technologies of surveillance, bodily regulation, time, and labor popularly associated with the prison
are exported to different domains of our everyday lives. And how families, communities and institutions engage, embrace, resist, and reinvent these technologies from a cross-cultural and dynamic perspective. The course will pay attention to how they interact with structures of caste, and race that differentially
impact people across a range of institutional and intimate sites such as psychiatric institutions, shelters, homes, and neighborhoods.
This course is an examination of the immigration state- the apparatuses and methods that have largely developed from the late nineteenth century onwards to detain and deport migrants from the U.S. Similarly, this course will also detail how these developments and systems have been contested at various points. On the walls of Angel Island, in the El Centro Immigration Detention Camp, in the halls of U.S. courts, and countless other spaces, everyday actors and political organizations have contested these policies throughout U.S. history. Along the way, this course will also consider how related developments around the carceral state, U.S. migration policy, foreign policy, and a range of other factors have shaped the stories of U.S. detention, deportation, and resistance.
This course uses the archival documents in the Washington State Archives to understand and document the histories of the incarceration of women, girls, trans and gender-non-binary people in WA state. Students work collaboratively with students in the FEPPS program in the prison to co-create an online history of incarceration for women and girls on StoryMapJS. Students gain an interdisciplinary and participatory approach to archival research, scholarly editing, and the praxis of recovery and public memory. The course exposes students to practical research methodologies and theoretical debates about archives; the history of incarceration; and how the archives connect to contemporary policy and issues for women in prison such as shackling, parenting, solitary confinement, education and other issues. Students think through the archival material with those most impacted by these issues by meeting with FEPPS students in the prison and alum of the program. The class will pay close attention to intersectionality, examining the fact that women of color and poor women are disproportionately likely to be incarcerated. Women's imprisonment exacerbates women's economic marginality, and women in prison struggle to receive meaningful job training and education. The course usually includes at least one visit to the archives to see the documents in person.