Essay Assignment -Reflective Discussion Chapters 1-3
For this assignment, you will complete the following steps:
1) Copy and paste the assignment questions into a new document.
2) Answer each of the questions by ‘clicking’ into the document where your answer will follow the question.
3) Make sure that your answer meets the word count requirement by visiting and pasting in your answer to see how many words your answer contains.
4) When you have completed your work, submit it through the assignment link by uploading your document by the due date.
Assignment questions:
1. You have participated in three reflective discussions for this module. Identify the most significant idea, perspective, critique, or response contributed by a classmate and explain why you believe that it was the most significant. Note that significance can exist because something is positive/good, negative/bad, completely new to you, or any variety of reasons. (200 word minimum)
2. Identify a significant idea, opinion, belief, assumption that you held prior to covering the material in these chapters that you have since changed, abandoned, or modified. After identifying and explaining the perspective and how it has changed, as well as what material impacted your perspective and why it was effective. (250 word minimum) Note that your answer here cannot be the same issue highlighted in question #1.
a. Consider that many of us tend to want to hold onto our already existing beliefs. Change is stressful. Being aware of the many factors that can influence us to change is valuable knowledge. In answering the question, consider these possibilities
i. whether hearing, seeing, or reading somethingimpacted you.
ii. Whether hearing from “authorities” has/had impact on you.
iii. Whether the fact that you could relate to the person providing information is particularly effective in changing your thinking
iv. Whether a person’s ability to write clearlyand/or passionately impacted you
v. Whether the process of being asked a question and needing to formulate an answer resulted in change
3. Identify and discuss the what criminal justice public policies/laws/practices are related to the perspective you discussed in question #2 . In your discussion, identify whether your change in perspective would mean that you would now support policy/law/practice that you previously wouldn’t, whether you previously supported policy/practice/law and now you would not, or whether your position on the policy/law/practice would not be significantly different. (200 word minimum)
a. Public policy: “In any society, governmental entities enact laws, make policies, and allocate resources. This is true at all levels. Public policy can be generally defined as a system of laws, regulatory measures, courses of action, and funding priorities concerning a given topic promulgated by a governmental entity or its representatives.”
i. Examples= punishing offenders vs other responses, treating juveniles differently, criminalizing possession of drugs, use of solitary confinement, holding offenders in jail pretrial, etc.
b. Laws: particular statutes that allow or require certain actions
i. Examples: use of the death penalty, allowing civil forfeiture, 3 strikes legislation, minimum mandatory sentencing, …
c. Practices: refers to ‘the way things are done’ as evidenced by something you learned in the course
i. Examples: how police patrol, use of force, how judges run their courtrooms, how prosecutors manage their cases, how laboratories collaborate with police, …
Your submission should start with your name, followed by question 1 and your answer to question 1, followed by questions 2 and 3. See below.
Sample submission format:
Name: Beth Warriner
1. You have participated in three reflective discussions for this module. Identify the most significant idea, perspective, critique, or response posted by a classmate and explain why you believe that it was the most significant. Note that significance can exist because something is positive/good, negative/bad, completely new to you, or any variety of reasons. (200 word minimum)
In chapter one we discussed the CJ system and how it works slowly and inefficiently in some places. In chapter two we learned about causes of crime and we watched a video about drug use. My classmate Liza Minelli posted her opinion about mental health playing a big role in the causation of crime. This was one of the most significant perspectives to me because if her statement is true, then it means that we have an entire system that is overwhelmingly unfair and immoral. Before I explain whatI mean by this, I will clarify that I do not know whether her statement is supported by the facts. However, it if is true, it means that we have set up a system to punish people, on the assumption that they ‘deserve’ punishment when in fact they are actually suffering from a condition (mental illness) that our social structure is ineffective in preventing, treating, or curing. I do believe that poverty and many of the associated social factors that are correlated with poverty play a role in the development of mental health issues. Factors such as drug use and abuse, children grieving the loss of parents, child abuse, hunger, trauma, pollution, and neglect are all beyond the control of the children exposed to them. Considering that the children exposed to these factors, through no fault of their own, develop a variety of mental health diagnoses and then get caught up in behavior we deem illegal will face a system that sees them worthy of more trauma (in the form of prison, death, fines, etc) is profoundly sad.
(267 words- determined at wordcounter.net)
Etc etc….
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