Introductory Topics in Legal Studies (276-0-1)

Topic

Crime, Punishment, and Social Control

Instructors

Abigail Rose Barefoot
847/467-0259
Abigail Barefoot is an Assistant Professor of Instruction at the Center for Legal Studies. Prof. Barefoot’s research explores questions of justice, safety, and accountability through the lens of prison abolition and critical carceral studies Abigail’s current book project Beyond Carceral Responses: Transformative Justice, Prison Abolition, and the Movement to End Sexual Violence examines transformative justice practices for sexual violence. Using an ethnographic approach, Abigail unpacks the tensions, contradictions, and possibilities of practicing transformative justice as experienced by survivors, facilitators, and people who cause harm. Her other teaching and research interests include LGBTQ Studies, American social movements, and mass incarceration.

Meeting Info

Parkes Hall 214: Mon, Wed 3:30PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

This course offers a sociological introduction to the topics of crime, punishment, and social control with a focus on the United States. In this course, we will examine various perspectives on crime and social control with particular attention to how society defines criminality, how axes of social difference—such as race, class, gender, and sexuality—intersect with issues of punishment and social control, how we as a society decide how to deal with crime, what effects those decisions have, and how punishment and social control techniques have changed over time. Structured by those broad concerns, we will explore topics including policing, courts and the judicial process, prisons and mass incarceration, and surveillance.