WORTH: 3% of semester grade

 

CAN THIS BE TURNED IN LATE?: NO

BE SURE TO FOLLOW THE FILE-NAMING CONVENTIONS FOR THIS COURSE (5% penalty if you do not).

All files should be saved on your computer as: your last name, followed by an underscore ("_"), followed by the first two letters of your first name, followed by an underscore ("_"), followed by the assignment number. So if a student named Saddam Hussein were to submit assignment number 14, the file name would be:

hussein_sa_14.doc

THIS IS ASSIGNMENT 14

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Remember, you can skip the first long paragraph on p. 14 of Criminology Goes to the Movies; instead, start where it says "Rational Choice Theory"

 

Question on Criminology Goes to the Movies

1) Explain what was the same and what was different between the "rational choice" vision of Beccaria in the eighteenth century and the "rational choice" vision of James Q. Wilson and others that emerged in the 1970s?  

Keep in mind the the material you need to answer the question is spread across several pages; accordingly, don't look for the one line answer!

Be sure to organize your paragraph around the familiar cl/ev/wa format and include evidence in the form of direct quotations.

Be sure to integrate your direct quotations using either METHOD 3 OR METHOD 4 FROM THE EXPLANATION OF HOW TO INTEGRATE QUOTATIONS (-5% IF YOU DO NOT)

Be sure to provide page number from Rafter (e.g., "(Rafter, p. 74)" )

 

Question on Thinking About Crime to p. 43

The following questions are decidedly short answer questions. Except where noted, you will not need more than a sentence to answer them.

 

2) According to the first paragraph of James Q. Wilson’s chapter,  the President’s Commission on Crime and Administration of Justice  (1965) “seemed” to draw upon what in their conclusion’s about crime and and its origins?

What were crime’s origins, according to the President’s Commission on Crime and Administration of Justice?

3) In the second paragraph, Wilson writes that if social scientists had, in fact, “supplied” public officials with a view of crime grounded in the items from question 2 above, that view would have to be reconciled with certain facts.   

What facts are these and why would they conflict with the view of crime held by the President’s Commission on Crime and Administration of Justice ?

4) According to Wilson, before policy makers “sought” the advice of social scientists regarding crime, to what extent had such scholars located crime’s origins in  “poverty, race, education, housing, or other objective conditions”?

5) Wilson states his central argument concisely in the paragraph that starts, “it is the argument of this chapter that. . .” 

Using your words and only your words (and NOT the author’s), explain this argument. Doing so might require several sentences.

6) On p. 43, Wilson writes that the “leading” criminological text of the time “faulted” every theory of crime except one.  What theory did this text think best explained crime and how, according to this theory, did crime arise (be sure to read to the end of p. 43)