Objectives
This curriculum unit will be focused around the history of the contemporary criminal justice system in the United States and its relation to race and civil rights in America. Beginning with the War on Drugs in the 1970s, under the Nixon administration, many marginalized groups in the United States have been systematically targeted and disenfranchised in the name of political and economic gains. Continuing into the Reagan era in the 1980s, the War on Drugs took a more literal turn; Ronald Reagan’s presidency correlated with a distressingly marked increase in incarceration rates, with nonviolent drug offenses resulting in an increase of 300,000 Americans imprisoned in a period of less than 20 years. The Clinton administration will fall under the microscope as well. Due to the adoption of formerly partisan “tough-on-crime” initiatives, an already tumultuous series of issues was further exacerbated with policies such as mandatory minimums, 3-strike laws and Truth in Sentencing. Whenever possible, the unit will also seek to understand crime and mass incarceration both nationally and locally in my home city of Philadelphia. Despite traditionally being a left-leaning city, Philadelphia has consistently exhibited tough-on-crime approaches, with one of the highest rates of incarceration in the nation.1 The unit will task students with analyzing and debating Supreme Court rulings within their historical context. Students will learn how, historically, these policies have been enacted through the actions of District Attorneys, prosecutors, civil servants. Additionally, we will make use of comparisons of homicide and drug incarceration rates throughout the last four decades. The unit will culminate in an empirical research project that tasks students with investigating crime policies in the Philadelphia, its neighborhoods and the citizens living there.
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