Distrust in Law Enforcement

Topic for paper: Distrust in Law Enforcement, ways to gain trust in the community: How does community policing effect officers future presence in communities, ways to prevent future police brutality and ways law enforcement can help people going through a mental health crisis.

Please follow the rubric that is provided!
24 Pages in length APA format!

RUBRIC –

All semester you have been reading articles that have a section titled “Literature Review.” These literature reviews serve a very important purpose. Specifically, the literature reviews tell readers what research has been done in the past. Literature reviews tend to be broken up a couple of different ways depending on the research question. Most literature reviews start off by defining the concept they are studying. For instance, studies studying the deterrent effects of punishment will define the concepts of deterrence and punishments using past literature. Notice how the concepts in the initial research proposal are (1) deterrence and (2) punishment. Don’t short change this – the concept of punishment might seem self-explanatory but there are tons of ways to punish a person and it does not always have to be a negative sanction. Define concepts and keep it relevant to your work.

Keep a keen eye here for your own work. Many of you are looking at topics involving inequality, causes of crime, etc…. Make sure you explain what is meant when you say ‘inequality’ because this means a lot of different things such as economic inequality, educational inequality, health care inequality, etc…. Also, there are a lot of different causes of crime – consider keeping thing specific to a particular theory (i.e. strain, rational choice, etc…). For example, If you are looking at income inequality as a cause of crime then specifically define what is meant by ‘income inequality’ and which theories specifically incorporate income inequality as a cause of crime. Not every theory believes income inequality causes crime (i.e. rational choice) – this is where all of the critical thinking and analytical skills you’ve learned over the last 4 years are going to be put to the test.

Once you define the concepts then discuss theory. Tell me about the various theoretical frameworks studies have relied upon to analyze qualitative and quantitative data. Not all theories will be fully supported – you’ve seen this in some studies read over the semester where hypotheses are rejected or weakly supported in quantitative analyses – make sure to discuss these findings. For example, in my work on environmental justice in sentencing I found in the context of criminal prosecutions against corporations sentencing outcomes were not causing environmental injustice through lower fines in poor/minority communities. In my recent work I’m looking at a new dependent variable that was discussed in Greife & Maume (2020) which is the ‘relative fine’ dependent variable and we do find evidence of environmental injustice (you didn’t read this article – it is still under review for publication). Point is I’m using the past work to highlight that there is no widespread empirical support to claim environmental injustice in civil/criminal sentencing of corporations violating federal environmental laws is occurring when using the ‘total fine’ dependent variable. You see the gap now? This is the type of analytical thinking I want to see – you won’t be perfect by any means but by now the obvious gaps in empirical support for or against a theory should be easily identifiable.

The rubric chart I’m using is below. Yes, there is some subjectivity to the grading but welcome to real life – we all try to be objective but nobody is 100% successful. That said, If you have any questions email or give me a time for a zoom conversation. Send me a draft if you want and I’ll do what I can (no promises). Good luck.

Category for Grading Non-Exhaustive List of Grading Criteria Points
Introduction of Literature Review • Clearly stated research question.
• Clearly and thoroughly provides the reader a roadmap for what they will be discussing. 10
Theoretical Frameworks • Student has adequately discussed the various theories cited by analyzed studies.
• Student has organized paragraphs by theory and thereby in a logical order
• Student adequately discusses which theories have the most support and why
• Student adequately discusses which parts of the analyzed theories are or are not supported by prior literature.
• Students are able to explain how their research question can advance scientific inquiry into their topic. 50
Conceptual Definitions • Students are able to distinguish between a conceptual definition and theoretical perspective
• Students are able to define concepts relevant and/or found in their research question using empirical studies. 30
Thoroughness of Research and Clarity of Writing • Student has read and analyzed a significant amount of research
• Student is not analyzing research in order to reach a pre-determined conclusion
• Students are adequately and clearly presenting the conclusions of the studies they have read & discussed. 10