Syllabus

Comparative Criminology and Criminal Justice

 Required Texts:

  **Reading Schedule**

Course Summary:

The primary purpose of this course is to provide students with an introductory understanding of transnational criminal behavior and how contemporary nation states create criminal justice policies to attempt to thwart it. Among the crime topics to be discussed are: drug trafficking, arms trafficking, money laundering, trafficking in people, organized crime, terrorism, and cybercrime.

Given the difficulties in discussing crime from a comparative perspective, the course will follow an inductive method of instruction to see what types of conclusions can be supported by empirical evidence. How do we know with any degree of certainty the nature and extent of a society’s crime problems? Students will be asked to critically evaluate their own perspectives of crime and how these are based upon a combination of sources, including mass media, personal experiences, books, courses, and Web resources.

The course will focus on the current resources available for analyzing the extent of transnational crime. These include materials available from scholarly, journalistic, law enforcement agency sources, as well as Web sites set up ordinary citizens and in some cases, criminals themselves (e.g. hacker Web sites). Official crime statistics will be analyzed as to the their strengths and limitations.

The problems inherent in difficulty in defining crime cross-culturally will be covered, include the following issues: counting problems, varying legal definitions, and the fact that crime in one place may not be a crime in another (e.g. money laundering). We will attempt to locate countries that do define crimes similarly and those that do not.

Through a combination of books, other assigned readings, Web lectures, and Web searches, students will attempt to uncover what currently are considered serious transnational crime problems and which tend to get less attention. A common definition of transnational crime will be developed only after students have investigated current issues. Students will be asked to answer the following type questions:

An important recognition will be that situations identified as crime problems and activities identified as criminal are socially constructed. Some problems will be labeled as serious and criminalized while others may be overlooked. Why for example, are drugs treated so seriously while global environmental pollution is not? Has the focus on global transnational terrorism become so all consuming that other important crime trends are being ignored?

By noting that local crime problems are identified as such as the result of a political process, students will be in a better position to see the relationship between crime and crime control policies. Policy plans a critical role within criminal justice (e.g. demand–reduction, medical model, selective incapacitation, zero tolerance). It is important to distinguish between factors that are apparently considered in creating a policy and those that appear to be ignored.

The course will focus on current criminal justice policies regarding the transnational crimes students identify as important. Students will conduct legal analyses of related laws.

Finally, the course will focus on whether existing specific criminal justice policies can be applied transnationally, and whether a need might exist for new global policies to deal with specified crime problem or problems.

Projects  and Assessments:

  As the students in this course will not meet face to face, projects are an essential element in keeping students focused, interacting with fellow students and the instructor, and providing feedback to the instructor that can be used for assessment purposes. Grades will be based upon class participation in the discussion forums and completion of the four course projects.

Students will be required to turn in written assignments each class, and post these to forum discussion. The threaded discussion is the heart and soul of interactive education outside of a classroom in the FSU Criminology model. This may change as technology changes, but right now, the threaded discussion is the best way for an instructor to conduct a class discussion whether the class is on-campus or scattered around the world. 

The threaded discussion is asynchronous.  Students do not have to immediately reply, but rather, can thoughtfully compose their response to a topic under discussion. To put it bluntly, the threaded discussion also is blind and deaf. The appearance, bearing and speaking skills of the student neither detract nor enhance their presentation.  Students' ideas and opinions stand on the merit of their logic and clarity of writing, not the charisma or body language of the speaker, or lack thereof. 

The threaded discussion is an equal opportunity activity. Aggressive students cannot dominate a discussion. Offensive students can be controlled. Passive students can be heard. In fact, all students will be heard, a rarity in most classrooms.

The strategies to use threaded discussion effectively to simulate classroom instruction and discussion include setting up forums as classroom questions, reflection questions, helpful links discussions, FAQ forums, reports, debates, and critiques.

In addition, to discussion forums students will be involved in a series of ongoing projects:

Project 1: Track news stories on a particular transnational crime and post to student’s Web journal.

Student will choose a particular crime of interest and track news stories appearing in on-line newspapers about that crime. The student will locate 3 stories per week, and write an online journal report about one of them. Student will critically assess the information in the news report, using the criteria learned in the course. This project will be ongoing starting in Week 1 through week 3.  

Project 2: Evaluate Transnational Crime Web Sites  

This assignment will start in week 4 and continue on through week 6.  

Project 3: Create a Successful Transnational Crime Venture

Write a plan for a criminal activity using the criteria in the definition of transnational crime generated earlier.

1. Options:

1. Design an activity that is currently illegal or criminal (same?).
2. Design an activity that is not yet classified as a transnational crime but may be classified as such if you are successful (i.e., moral entrepreneurs are aroused).

Describe how the criminal activity fits the transnational crime paradigm implied in the definition.

2. Why are you doing this?

  Motivation

3. How will you carry this out?

  Logistics

4. Cite laws or regulations in targeted countries that govern the specified activity based upon the countries targeted.

The project will be done in week 5.

Project 4: Develop a policy and create strategies for stopping transnational crime

Students will be asked to reverse roles from project 3 and become policy makers aimed at eradicating the spread of transnational crimes. In this new role, a student will be given another student’s plan for the successful commission of transnational crimes, and asked to develop the means to thwart the plan. Students will be asked to review current laws and policies for the impacted countries, test their adequacy, and devise new policy and strategy as needed.

The project will be done in week 6.

(For complete details on assignments, go to the assignments page.)

Course Grading Policy 

The grading scale for the course will be as follows: