The class serves as an introduction to the Crime, Law and Justice Studies minor through an interdisciplinary approach. The course uses approaches from history, sociology, ethnography, critical theory and literature to examine the sequence of events that occur in the criminal legal system to address the following questions and topics: Is our system just? What is crime, and what are some theories that claim to explain "criminality"? How did the US criminal legal process and procedures emerge, and how do they function today? What is the history of policing and the police, and what are current issues that shape policing today? What happens once a person is caught up in the criminal legal process, and what role do judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and forensics play in that process? In the small percentage of cases that proceed to trial, what happens, and what are the options for the person? What happens after, and do prisons administer just punishment? What about after prison?

The driving question of the course is what it means to have and create a just system and for whom, and how does race, gender, sexuality and other categories of identity shape how a person experiences this sequence of often inevitable events. To understand complex issues like Crime, Law and Justice, we will use numerous case studies and stories such as Kalief Browder, a 16-year who spent years in Rikers Island Prison without a conviction, and whose case spurred the movement to close Rikers. We look at how judges and prosecutors make decisions in a Cleveland Courthouse, how one man experienced the death penalty, and read short stories that imagine societies with different ways of administering justice. This class will have multiple class visits including a Juvenile Prison superintendent, a police officer, people who have been in prison, a lawyer with the Clemency project and others.

Prisons worldwide are widely acknowledged as institutions that impose strict limits on individual autonomy and mobility. Yet people's freedoms are regulated through spatial and disciplinary technologies that exceed the prison. This course will explore
how prisons and carceral systems are interconnected and operate globally. We will ask questions such as why are young women in India's university hostels subject to routine surveillance and "curfew" hours? How are state energy projects for environmental conservation implicated in the confinement of marginalized fishing communities in Rwanda? To explore these we will look at how technologies of surveillance, bodily regulation, time, and labor popularly associated with the prison
are exported to different domains of our everyday lives. And how families, communities and institutions engage, embrace, resist, and reinvent these technologies from a cross-cultural and dynamic perspective. The course will pay attention to how they interact with structures of caste, and race that differentially
impact people across a range of institutional and intimate sites such as psychiatric institutions, shelters, homes, and neighborhoods.

This course uses the archival documents in the Washington State Archives to understand and document the histories of the incarceration of women, girls, trans and gender-non-binary people in WA state. Students work collaboratively with students in the FEPPS program in the prison to co-create an online history of incarceration for women and girls on StoryMapJS. Students gain an interdisciplinary and participatory approach to archival research, scholarly editing, and the praxis of recovery and public memory. The course exposes students to practical research methodologies and theoretical debates about archives; the history of incarceration; and how the archives connect to contemporary policy and issues for women in prison such as shackling, parenting, solitary confinement, education and other issues. Students think through the archival material with those most impacted by these issues by meeting with FEPPS students in the prison and alum of the program. The class will pay close attention to intersectionality, examining the fact that women of color and poor women are disproportionately likely to be incarcerated. Women's imprisonment exacerbates women's economic marginality, and women in prison struggle to receive meaningful job training and education. The course usually includes at least one visit to the archives to see the documents in person.