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Friday, April 22, 2016
Criminal Law Class Materials Request - Update
Back in January, I imposed on the Prawfs community for some suggestions about materials for a few stand-alone class sessions I was hoping to integrate into my standard first-year Criminal Law course:
A Criminal Law class-materials request
Consulting the blawg-oracle: I'm doing something new (for me!) in my first-year Criminal Law course, and I would welcome very much some help. I made some cuts in my usual coverage, and freed up three classes (75 mins each) for what I'm describing as "special" or "current debates" topics. I was thinking of (1) the "mass incarceration" phenomenon; relatedly (2) the "overcriminalization" debate; and (3) policing. As we all know, each of these topics could take up an entire course (and more) and I'm proposing to put together simply a 30-pages or so handout for each, for the purpose of just one in-class discussion (although, of course, these topics come up, in other contexts, throughout the semester).Take it away! Revise my syllabus!
Because some people asked for a report-back, I'm imposing again! I ended up doing three special classes, one on Solitary Confinement, one on Policing, and one on Overcriminalization.
For the Solitary Confinement session, we watched the Frontline documentary, "Solitary Nation" and read (a) the opinion and order in Peoples v. Anucci; (b) A. Gawande's "Hellhole," and (c) A. Cohen's review of "Solitary Nation", "Creating Monsters." For the "Policing" section, we looked at excerpts of the recent report of the President's Task Force on Policing and watched part of a Brookings panel on that report. And, for "Overcriminalization", we watched part of the Kozinski / Wilkinson debate on Criminal Justice reform that the Cato Institute hosted as well as parts of Kozinski's paper, "Criminal Justice 2.0."
The students *seemed* to enjoy these units -- if only as breaks between inchoate crimes and defenses! -- but we'll see what the evaluations say!
Thanks again for all the help.
Posted by Rick Garnett on April 22, 2016 at 03:03 PM in Criminal Law, Rick Garnett | Permalink
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