Welcome!

The growing role of social media in our everyday life is a relevant concern to the study of criminal justice, insofar as it shapes our understanding of our social world.

Indeed, every day, criminal justice issues are discussed in blog posts or Twitter messages, citizen journalists with smart phones increasingly scrutinize the actions of criminal justice professionals, and every issue ends up as a social battleground, spinning one way or another.

While this course will focus on looking at law and justice through the lens of various media, this is not precisely a media studies course. Rather, it is a course aiming at strengthening and further developing a criminological understanding of law and justice in our society.

Throughout the semester, the course’s focus will very closely follow on-going and emerging news stories, tying them back to theoretical concepts surrounding issues central to understanding law and justice, and opening up discussions.