Suggested Visual Projects/Creative Measures:

Note: Your visual projects/creative measure: a) Must relate to "media, crime, and the criminal justice system." b) Must be approved before starting your creative measure. c) Cannot be something that you are doing or have done for another course. d) Research cannot be 100% online (i.e., google, askjeeves). e) Must conduct library research using scholarly works, (not the popular press -- Time Magazine, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated). No term papers! Email me your visual project idea/topic.

  • Make an "explosion box/card" that focuses on this week's topic, "Media & Corrections/Punishment ."
  • Compare real correctional officer duties to the media portrait of them, similar to the Chapter 4 comparison of media and the street police . [Surette, p. 169]
  • Watch Shawshank Redemption or another prison movie. Discuss the use of correctional stereotypes. If this particular movie was all someone knew about corrections, what correctional policies would he or she likely to support or oppose? Why. [Surette, p. 169]
  • Watch crime shows for a week and note how many criminals are also ex-cons. Note how deterrence and rehabilitation are portrayed as likely outcomes of incarceration.
  • View one of the following prison movies: "The Birdman of Alcatraz," "Brubaker," "American Me," "Escape from Alcatraz," (or another prison movie). How does the media construction of the correctional system compare and contrast to your knowledge of corrections.
  • View one of the following movies focusing on capital punishment: "The Green Mile, " "Dead Man Walking," "The Life of David Gale," "Redemption," or others. Analyze the media's construction of capital punishment.
  • Listen to an old-time radio program about crime, criminals and criminal justice. (Every week-night on 780 AM from midnight to 1 a.m. or Sunday evenings on 90.7FM, from 9-11 p.m.) Compare and contrast the radio image of crime and criminal justice with today's television and/or movie images.

    Self-Assessment Questions for each Visual Project:


    1. List the names of the individuals in your group. What did you do exactly for this visual project? (If in a group, explain the division of labor and your individual contribution to this visual project). Describe the small item that you made for visitors to your visual project to "take away."
    2. Explain in depth, how your visual project specifically relates to "media, crime, criminal justice" (i.e., the readings, the documentaries, class discussions, major concepts). Explain how the interrelationship of "theory, policy, practice" applies to your visual project. What did you learn?
    3. Assess how the 6Cs apply to your visual project, with special attention on competence and creativity. What is your visual project self-assessment (provide a letter grade) ___ ? Explain why this particular grade.

    Recommended Readings:

  • Jennifer Gonnerman. Life on the Outside.
  • Michael Santos. Inside.
  • Thomas Bernard & Robert Johnson. A Life for a Life.
  • Mumia Abu-Jamal. Live from Death Row.
  • Jarvis Jay Masters. Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row .
  • Kathleen O'Shea. Women on the Row: Revelations from Both Sides of the Bars.
  • John Irwin. The Warehouse Prison.
  • Michel Foucault. Discipline and Punish.

  • Internet Movie Database
  • Lawrence Lessig. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University, has made his book free online.

    Course Syllabus for CRMJ 385 "Media, Crime, Criminal Justice"




    Media Sources:

      Left/Right Perspectives - Cursor - New York Times
      Arts and Letters Daily - The Economist - The Guardian
      Wall Street Journal -The Weekly Standard - The Nation
      Los Angeles Times - Chicago Tribune - The Washington Post
      Cursor's Al Jazeera Archive - Ha'aretz - Palestine Monitor

      Indymedia - BBC News - New Profile - Progressive Sociologists Network



      E-Mail Icon takata@uwp.edu

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