Racism in the Criminal Justice System

This is the culmination of the semester’s work through a researched position paper that presents your academic and professional position on a problem (one singular problem, not multiple problems) you want to explore in your career field (presented as a question, issue, concern, direction, belief system, current expectations, or basic human rights issue in your field, etc. – many opportunities and options to frame your problem and writing). It should reflect clear knowledge of the discourse community (and academic audience), the current conversation on the topic in research, and the conventions of your field. It should be an obvious attempt to enter your future discourse community by problematizing your issue and follow your field’s conventions and guidelines for documentation. Thus, it isn’t something that should be thrown together. Remember, you aren’t writing “down” to unintelligent people by informing them of simplistic concepts in your field – you’re writing to the people in your field who would be interviewing you. As such, defining simplistic terms and giving a history of your field are not a good move. This should probably be a minimum of a 4th or 5th draft that has been taken to the WRC and paid a high-level of attention to specifics … thus, having been scrutinized and revised repeatedly, and is ready for graded submission. Furthermore, it should speak of your ability to choose, synthesize, and document sources correctly and in good rhetorical standing. It is the proud exclamation of information and knowledge of the term presented in a credible academic form. Remember: show this problem as complex – not as introductory and simplistic. Make sure you use a minimum of 12 credible academic sources (these will be academic articles from the library database). Cover pages (when required by your doc style), abstracts (when required by your doc style), and Works Cited pages (or whatever your doc style may call them) do not count in the required 15 pages. The 15 pages are pages of your writing (from introduction to conclusion), not the wrappings that frame your writing. This paper should be presented in Times New Roman, 12 point font, double-spaced, with 1” margins. That keeps each student’s 15 page requirement the same. Each page and/or source your final paper is short of the required minimums earns a substantial deduction (8% per page; 3% per source).