UC Berkeley fall course with RJ theme and content

Looking for RJ courses this coming semester?

Check out the following:

Criminal Justice in the Community

Prof: Nikki Jones

African American Studies 139 P 001 Lec (Special Topics)

Tu/Thurs 9:30-11:00,170 Barrows

Course Description

Course Description: What is the relationship between the criminal justice system and the community? What role does power play in this relationship? How does this relationship inform and reproduce understandings about race, gender, class and sexuality? How has this relationship changed over time? How is this relationship being re-formed today?

In this course, we will examine the relationship between the criminal justice system and the community. We will examine social and historical trends, but our main focus will be on the evolution of this relationship since the mid-20th century, especially how this relationship developed in distressed urban neighborhoods in the post-Civil Rights era. We will pay special attention to how “criminal justice” and “the community” are defined and the implications of these definitions for the development of our current criminal justice system. We will focus primarily on the experience of African Americans living in urban settings. I will draw on my field research in San Francisco along with ongoing research using video recordings of police-citizen encounters in urban settings to illustrate key concepts and concerns introduced in class. We will also critically consider what the relationship between the criminal justice system and the community ought to look like in the future.