GOVT 3142 - Incarceration, Policy Response, and Self-Reflection

(crosslisted) AMST 3142
(SBA-AS when taken for 3 or 4 credits)

Fall, Spring. 1-4 credits, variable. Student option grading.

Prerequisite: Participation as a Teaching Assistant in the CPEP program in Auburn or Cayuga or work in a juvenile or other correctional facility. Permission of instructor required.

P. Sawyer, R. Scott.

This class is intended to provoke some hard thinking about the relationship of committed “outsiders” and advocates of change to the experience of crime, punishment, and incarceration and to the men we meet at Auburn/Cayuga who have been in most instances long-confined to prison. We will read, think, talk and write about the incarceration experience and about policies that shape this experience. We will also think self-reflexively about the character of the ‘outsider’s’ educational, political, and personal engagement. What are the motivations and what are the goals of such engagement? What are the anticipated outcomes - personal, social, educational, political, and/or moral and perhaps spiritual? In an effort to delve deeply into these questions, we will read a broad selection of work on incarceration, itself, as well as on the experience of what has come to be termed service learning or civic engagement. (AM)