Annotated Bibliographies
Every student must compare two (2) related scholarly journal articles. Make sure your articles relate to the criminal justice system (e.g. domestic violence, community policing, violence in prisons, shock incarceration, prosecutorial discretion, etc). Each annotated bibliography should be no less than three and no more than four pages in length. Each annotated bibliography is worth 10 points, for a total of 20 points.
Only scholarly journal articles may be used. Scholarly journals come from peer-reviewed journals such as Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Journal of Criminal Justice, Sociology and Social Research, Law and Society Review, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Social Forces, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Women and Criminal Justice, Juvenile and Family Court Journal, The Prison Journal, the Canadian Journal of Criminology andthe British Journal of Criminology. You may also use peer-reviewed articles outside of the criminal justice discipline. For example, the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, as well as a number of psychology journals, regularly have articles concerning criminal justice issues. Please do not use law review articles.
Do not use trade-publications like the Journal of the American Bar Association, Corrections Today, Law and Order Today and Police Chief or government publications like OJJDP Fact Sheet, the FBI Bulletin and other government reports and updates. Articles published in these publications are useful in many ways, but not for this assignment.
Scholarly articles selected should be at least eight pages in length, have no less than eight references and been published in the last ten (10) years. Both empirical and theoretical studies are acceptable for this assignment. If you have a question about the type of journal article you are considering, ask me.
Title your annotated bibliographies appropriately. Be sure to include the date, your full name, the name of this course and its section number on your title page. In terms of format and content, please follow APA rules. Refer to sample annotated bibliography attached to this syllabus.
Example Paper
Here is an example of how I want your annotated bibliography to appear. It is a partial copy of a student’s paper, which received an “A.” Please follow this format. Each article’s annotated bibliography should be no less than three and no more than four pages in length. Place your name and class on the top of the first page. Place page numbers on the bottom of each page.
Smith, B. L., Johnson, A., & Kline, D. (1996). Crime and the police. American Criminological Review, 51 (3), 541-554.
Do a couple of paragraphs or so summarizing the study and its critical findings and conclusion. This should be double-spaced and in 12-point font like so:
Smith and her colleagues conducted a 12-month qualitative study evaluating criminal and rule-breaking activity among officers on a major metropolitan police force. Each member of the research team had extensive criminal law training edusson and was given training regarding the department’s policies and procedures so that they could identify rule and law breaking by the officers they observed. Their primary investigative technique was participant-observation and involved 12 months and nearly 12,000 hours worth of ride-along observations by the 12-person research team. All 120 officers on the force were observed for a two-week period, during regular working hours, by at least two members of the research team.
Smith and her colleagues found that minor departmental rule breaking, such as accepting minor gratuities like coffee and doughnuts from the public, was rampant. Over 85% of the officers observed accepted such tokens on three or more occasions during the two-week period during which they were observed. Actual criminal activity was comparatively rare. Only 15% of the officers observed committed a misdemeanor, such as petty-theft or driving while intoxicated, while on duty. Only two officers committed felonies (aggravated assault in both cases) while being observed by the researchers.
Skip a line then do a couple of paragraphs or so critically evaluating the article you read. Critical Assessment does not involve you telling me whether you like the article or not.
While these results reflect a low level of serious law breaking by police officers on duty, the method the researchers chose to examine this problem probably contributed to this outcome. Specifically, all of the officers observed knew studybay they were being observed by the researchers and thus may have engaged in less law breaking than they otherwise would have. The fact that researchers switched research subjects every two weeks no doubt exacerbated this inherent limitation by thwarting the development of the trust necessary for the officers to feel comfortable breaking the law in front of the researchers.
On the other hand, by keeping the relationship between the officers and the researchers somewhat removed, there was little danger that the researchers would come to identify so strongly with the police that they would be inclined to ignore or minimize instances of law or rule breaking. Keeping an arms-length essaypro relationship between researchers and subjects is particularly important when, as here, researchers are asked to make somewhat subjective determinations regarding whether particular behavior constituted a crime like assault or was simply self-defense essay cola, write my essay, dissertation writing service, writer my paper, homework help. While the independence of the observers was not compromised, it is nevertheless quite likely that at least some officers modified their conduct, especially with regard to criminal offending, during the observation period in response to being observed. Thus, these
results should probably be taken as a very conservative indicator of actual on the job offending. The large amount of petty rule breaking that occurred in the presence of observers may indicate that officers are unaware of the rules or that the rules are so rarely or leniently enforced that the officers felt free to violate them even when they knew they were being observed.
