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Special Topic Courses
Gender and the Law
Gender and criminal, civil, and regulatory law. Criminal issues include sexual assault, prostitution, and the criminalization of pornography and sexual trafficking in women, and gender relations in the criminal justice system. Civil issues include marital and divorce laws and laws regarding reproduction. Other issues include sexual harassment and discrimination in housing, credit, insurance, employment, and education.
Controversial Issues
The American justice systems and the theories underlying them. Focus is on the criminal justice process and issues related to each step and institution in it. Includes varieties of law and justice, issues dealing with the police, courts, and corrections.
Law and Human Rights
Legal, moral, and historical examination of international human rights. Friction among the values of national sovereignty, individual rights, self-determination, and the toleration of minorities is considered, as well as legal and extra-legal methods for humanitarian intervention, from World Court indictments to military invasion.
Intelligence Analysis
This course analyzes the specific role of the intelligence analyst within the context of the intelligence cycle. It details the methods for taking information from various collection sources and synthesizing into a useful intelligence product.
Terrorism, Crime, and Public Policy
This course examines the problem of terrorism and its causes, to provide a basis for preventing it. It includes distinctions among types of terrorism, crime and aggression, their causes, and implications for prevention; Huntington's clash of civilization model; cross-cultural dialog and exchange; the management of fear; the applicability of crime prevention strategies to the problem of terrorism; the role of religion, the reshaping of military and intelligence strategies; use of technology for diction and prevention; and the management of errors in balancing security and rights.
Theories of Punishment
Examination of the philosophical issues associated with criminal punishment, particularly theories of the moral justification for punishment. The course considers retributive, deterrent, incapacitation, and moral reform theories, the role of victim and community anger in the imposition of punishment, as well as alternatives such as restorative justice.
Race and Justice in America
This course examines issues of justice in America rough a racial lens. Analyzing the nexus between contemporary race and justice issues and their historical origins, the course explores historical topics such as slavery, Jim Crow, the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and desegregation. The roles of federal legislation, judicial decisions, and executive authority in shaping the way race is framed and perceived in America within the context of the judicial system is also examined.
Criminological Theory
Examines criminological theory including early religious and spiritual notions of crime, and classical, rational choice, and deterrence theories. The development of positivism from both a biosocial and psychological perspective, the range of sociological theories and the empirical research related to these theories.