I teach the following courses in the Department of Criminology at Penn:
CRIM 200 -- Introduction to Criminal Justice
This course examines how the criminal justice system responds to crime in society as well as how society responds to the criminal justice system. The course reviews the historical development of criminal justice agencies in the United States and the available scientific evidence on the effect these agencies have on controlling crime. The purpose of the course is to increase your knowledge about how the U.S. criminal justice system works but we will also spend a great deal of time thinking about the quality of the available evidence and how we know what we know. While this is an introductory course, I very much want this course to be policy relevant – after a couple of introductory lectures, we will spend each class meeting discussing a particular topic or set of policy questions that are relevant right now. I will provide some background on the issue and will provide a brief overview of what we know and do not know about the issue, to date. Topics we will cover this semester include the use of force by police against citizens, the effectiveness of mass incarceration, the use of capital punishment, the effectiveness of gun control laws, and the relationship between immigration and crime to name a few. [syllabus]
CRIM 535 -- Statistics for Public Policy
This course provides an introduction to applied statistical techniques in the social sciences and is tailored, in particular, to students pursuing the master of science degree in the Department of Criminology. It is taught as a basic course in statistics and presumes minimal mathematical or statistical background. We’ll begin with a brief introduction to the research process. We’ll then cover the computation, interpretation and understanding of basic descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, sampling and distributions, measures of association and finally regression analysis. [syllabus]
CRIM 601 -- Seminar in Criminal Justice
This course provides an overview of what we know about crime and the criminal justice system in the United States and other developed nations. The purpose of the course is to increase your knowledge about how the U.S. criminal justice system works but we will also spend a great deal of time thinking about the quality of the available evidence and how we know what we know. This is a companion course to CRIM 634 which many of you will have taken last semester with Professor Ouss – to that end, we will focus on topics that were not covered in that course. However, it is not necessary to have taken CRIM 634 to enroll in this course.
[syllabus]
CRIM 200 -- Introduction to Criminal Justice
This course examines how the criminal justice system responds to crime in society as well as how society responds to the criminal justice system. The course reviews the historical development of criminal justice agencies in the United States and the available scientific evidence on the effect these agencies have on controlling crime. The purpose of the course is to increase your knowledge about how the U.S. criminal justice system works but we will also spend a great deal of time thinking about the quality of the available evidence and how we know what we know. While this is an introductory course, I very much want this course to be policy relevant – after a couple of introductory lectures, we will spend each class meeting discussing a particular topic or set of policy questions that are relevant right now. I will provide some background on the issue and will provide a brief overview of what we know and do not know about the issue, to date. Topics we will cover this semester include the use of force by police against citizens, the effectiveness of mass incarceration, the use of capital punishment, the effectiveness of gun control laws, and the relationship between immigration and crime to name a few. [syllabus]
CRIM 535 -- Statistics for Public Policy
This course provides an introduction to applied statistical techniques in the social sciences and is tailored, in particular, to students pursuing the master of science degree in the Department of Criminology. It is taught as a basic course in statistics and presumes minimal mathematical or statistical background. We’ll begin with a brief introduction to the research process. We’ll then cover the computation, interpretation and understanding of basic descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, sampling and distributions, measures of association and finally regression analysis. [syllabus]
CRIM 601 -- Seminar in Criminal Justice
This course provides an overview of what we know about crime and the criminal justice system in the United States and other developed nations. The purpose of the course is to increase your knowledge about how the U.S. criminal justice system works but we will also spend a great deal of time thinking about the quality of the available evidence and how we know what we know. This is a companion course to CRIM 634 which many of you will have taken last semester with Professor Ouss – to that end, we will focus on topics that were not covered in that course. However, it is not necessary to have taken CRIM 634 to enroll in this course.
[syllabus]