Criminal Justice

[close] A group intended for all the readers who are teachers of the social studies: to share useful reading in the content areas, as well as in education as a whole. Create a discussion for your discipline, a class subject, a unit, or maybe your targeted grade/age-group! Please share your wisdom and experiences! Invite your fellow teaching friends!

[close] Welcome! This is a book club for everyone. This book club may be of particular interest to you if you wish to learn more about a variety of topics that fall into the category of social justice, including themes related to (but not limited to) discrimination of all kinds, both racial oppression and privilege, feminism, mental health, poverty, criminal justice, gender, addiction, sexuality, religion, abuse, healing… and more. We will read fiction and non-fiction, books that are quite obviously related to a particular SJ topic, as well as books that might be a bit more abstract. My goal is to choose books that pull you in and hold your interest, simultaneously informing, entertaining, and provoking deep critical thinking. I will avoid lengthy, overly academic pieces and try to choose books that capture our minds and hearts. We will read biographies and science fiction and historical fiction and classics and everything in between. My hope is that members will engage in respectful discussion with each other, not just about the books that we read specifically, but also about the themes and topics highlighted in the material. Invite your old classmate with whom you used to have really great intellectual discussions. Invite your roommate that just recently moved to the US. Invite your aunt that doesn’t believe white privilege is actually a thing. Invite your brother that’s a veteran. Invite your friend that keeps talking about wanting to join a book club. Let’s chat. Let’s debate. Let’s learn. Let’s grow. Let’s show the world how to discuss hard topics respectfully and learn from each other. THIS IS A BOOK CLUB FOR EVERYONE.

[close] Laissez faire and mass incarceration: How could these possibly go together? Surprisingly, they have and they've been joined at the hip for a long time... It is widely believed today that the free market is the best mechanism ever invented to efficiently allocate resources in society. Just as fundamental is the belief that government has a legitimate and competent role in policing and punishing. The result, in this country, has been an incendiary combination of laissez faire and mass incarceration. Today, the United States incarcerates over one percent of its adult population, the highest number and rate in the world. In this book and on this forum, Bernard Harcourt discusses the birth of the idea of natural order in economic thought and its gradual evolution into today’s myth of the free market, and he explores how it could possibly have produced the largest government-run penal sphere on the globe. This forum will be live starting March 1, 2011.

[close] A group dedicated to those working in or interested in the fields of criminology, criminal justice, forensics, law enforcement, etc. To be used as a way to discuss and share various books that relate to these fields.