SOC 200 - Criminology (4)

Provides an introduction to the field of criminology, surveying the social construction of crime, the legal conceptualization of crime, the nature and extent of crime, trends in crime and criminality over time, theoretical models on the causes of crime, typologies of crime, and the criminal justice response from policing, to trial, to incarceration. Substantive attention is devoted to the centrality of the intersections of race, gender and social class as major variables in criminology and in the American criminal justice system. The “color” of (in)justice and the reliance on mass incarceration as the solution to the crime problem are investigated. See department chair.