Perspectives on Corrections and Penology

• Choose a topic regarding the prison system in the United States. I don’t like to assign topics to students, but rather hope that you enjoy the opportunity to learn a topic of your choice. Be creative and choose a topic regarding the prison system about which you have always wanted to learn. In the past, students have written about drugs in the system, physical abuse behind bars, and the privatization of correctional institutions, to name a few. If you are nervous about your topic, feel free to email me any questions you have.
• Please explain your thoughts and ideas in detail. In short, support your ideas with evidence. Evidence can be anything from personal experience to sociological journal research to discussions in class to documentaries. Your final paper should contain at least 5 academic sources. The course readings count as academic sources.
• Be sure to offer an analysis within your paper by explaining how and why a particular social phenomenon occurs.
• Given that I assign papers to help you develop your writing voice, please be sure to revise your papers. As someone who grades thousands of papers, I can easily detect papers written the night before, especially those that have not gone through significant revision.
a. Be sure to organize your thoughts by including an introduction and conclusion.
b. Make sure everything is grammatically correct, spelled correctly and makes logical sense.
c. See the guide on how to eliminate wordiness.
• Double space your papers.
• Length of your draft paper should be 5+ pages long.
• Be Creative and Good Luck