Therapeutic Criminal Justice (605-1)
Instructors
Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg
Meeting Info
Online: Mon 9:00AM - 11:00AM
McCormick 375 - Smith Hall: Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri 9:00AM - 3:30PM
Overview of class
Punitive justice is one of the hallmarks of the carceral state. In the US, penal control has become the main social response to crime. However, during the last few decades, some competing notions of justice have emerged and been applied in criminal legal systems. These notions include procedural justice, therapeutic-oriented justice, problem-solving justice, community-based justice, and restorative justice. Using a comparative lens, this course will introduce a variety of therapeutic, restorative, and problem-solving mechanisms that have been developed and implemented in criminal justice systems both in the US and worldwide. We will explore the potential of the criminal justice system by adopting non-punitive notions of justice to achieve goals that go beyond its classic, traditional goals, such as enhancing the well-being of its various stakeholders, empowering communities, restoring relationships between law-breakers and victims, encouraging reconciliation, and providing holistic rehabilitation to offenders. The course will address the tension between the criminal justice system's traditional goals and the therapeutic-oriented goals. We will discuss the question of whether the criminal justice system is the right domain to promote therapeutic goals given the potential risks of net-widening, stigmatization and its collateral consequences, deprivation of due process rights, paternalism, and coercion that arise when therapeutically oriented goals are promoted within the criminal legal regime, especially in societies that suffer from racial and socio-economic inequalities.
Evaluation Method
10 - Mandatory Attendance
60 - Active and significant class participation (significant engagement during class discussions and activities, speaking in class, referring to reading materials, contributing ideas and reflections)
20 - Response paper and presentation of a supplementary reading assignment
10 - Short Reflection paper
Class Notes
This course will be taught in a condensed way to pedagogically maximize experiential learning and to enable the students to develop an understanding of the multi-dimensional notion of justice in the criminal legal context. The course consists of 5 days (an online Zoom meeting on December 18th + four days of in-person instruction on January 2-5), each focusing on various distinct meanings of justice in the criminal sphere. Each meeting contains learning units that are connected and correspond with each other. The discussions in each of the meetings will be based on the observations and insights gained in previous meetings. Due to the broad timeframe of each meeting, the students will be able to engage deeply and thoroughly with ideas and critiques that relate to each of these notions and establish a comprehensive understanding of each of these notions and their interplays. The timeframe devoted to each meeting would allow us to combine theoretical learning with experiential activities, creating a sequence of learning experiences that a scattered course cannot provide. Sessions of theoretical discussion on abstract principles will be followed by class activities, such as watching documentaries and videos and analyzing them together; working in small groups on hypothetical or illustrative cases, and conducting a restorative community circle in class.