CULT 3025 Prisons, Punishment and Criminal Justice

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Credit Points 10

Legacy Code 102711

Coordinator Selda Dagistanli Opens in new window

Description The demise of corporal punishment and the rise of incarceration are defining features of control in modern states. This unit provides an historical and sociological examination of the models, practices and justifications for punishment and incarceration. It begins with an overview of early liberal notions of the social contract, the modern movement away from corporal punishment towards incarceration, and a subsequent welfare oriented emphasis on treatment, reform and rehabilitation. Following from this, the unit explores the development of probation and parole systems, decarceration, community corrections, mass imprisonment, and the contemporary control of risk and 'dangerous' populations. These themes are considered through an intersectional analysis of structural factors such as age, gender, sexuality, social class, racial/ethnic identity and the impact of imprisonment and corrections on different individuals and groups. This unit pays particular attention to the over-representation of Indigenous populations in Australian prisons.

School Social Sciences

Discipline Criminology

Student Contribution Band HECS Band 4 10cp

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Level Undergraduate Level 3 subject

Incompatible Subjects CULT 2011 - Prisons Punishment and Criminal Justice (Level 2)

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:

Demonstrate the relationship between punishment and society, the history of the prison and its relationship to modernism;
Critically analyse how social practices of punishment affect certain sectors of the population, including highly marginalised groups;
Describe the impact of contemporary issues in public policy and penality, including community-based measures, private prisons, the dispersal of punishment, restorative and therapeutic justice and the law and order driven imperatives of retribution and vengeance;
Critically assess the contributions of philosophical approaches to contemporary debates about punishment goals and practices.

Subject Content

Punishment and criminal justice
Philosophical justifications for punishment
The rise of the prison
Juvenile detention and punishment of youth
Class, race, disadvantage and imprisonment: Indigenous over-representation
Gender and punishment
Non-custodial penalties and regulatory justice
Penal reform, activism and prison politics
Prison policies and correctional programmes
Decarceration and recarceration
Privatisation of prisons and corrections
Risk, fear and ?edangerousness?f

Assessment

The following table summarises the standard assessment tasks for this subject. Please note this is a guide only. Assessment tasks are regularly updated, where there is a difference your Learning Guide takes precedence.

Item	Length	Percent	Threshold	Individual/Group Task
Essay Plan - Essay Plan on one set topic citing research and a thesis statement as a framework for assessment 2	300 words	20	N	Individual
Essay	1,500 words	45	N	Individual
Report on prison visit	1,200 words	35	N	Individual