This course will be examining how we actually deal with criminals. To do this, we will examine all the components of the criminal justice system from the police, to juries, to the court system and our correctional system. We will examine how the system is supposed to work and where it breaks down in fairness and accuracy. Some of the issues, many controversial, that we will look at are police ethics and police brutality, racial profiling, eyewitness testimony, false confessions, jury selection, defense, and prison rates in the US. As a college level criminology course, the objective of this course is not simply to have a understanding of the working process of the system, but to analyze how the system works and how it doesn’t. Where could it improved?
