Course Description
Examination of the history of criminal justice in the modern world. Topics of study will include law codes and the legal profession, patterns of criminal activity, and the policing of crime, detention and incarceration, torture and rehabilitation, and the evolution of an international system of campaigns, organizations, and laws aimed at establishing what is commonly referred to as “human rights."
Athena Title
History of Crime Punishment
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Students will study the historical formation of criminal justice systems by looking at the many individuals, groups, and institutions that have converged to form such systems in the modern era. They will see how historians have interpreted law codes, often reading between the lines to suggest how various polities and societies viewed concepts such as property, order, hierarchy, and violence. They will also study the remarkable changes that have occurred since 1700 regarding the detention and treatment of prisoners, including the proliferation of large penitentiaries and of forced labor in authoritarian penal colonies. Finally, they will trace the history of human rights campaigns, organizations, and laws. Students will read local and national case studies as well as comparative and global studies. An examination of primary source material will give students a chance to understand the challenges facing historians of this topic.
Topical Outline
1. Interpreting law codes 2. Crime and punishment before 1700 3. Judicial systems of the 18th century 4. The Enlightenment and human rights 5. Democratic revolutions and legal reform 6. The “birth” of the penitentiary 7. Industrial crime and punishment 8. Political exiles 9. The romance of the suffering prisoner 10. Global comparisons of “backward” and “progressive” justice 11. The goal of rehabilitation 12. War conventions & changing ideas of bodily pain 13. The first concentration camps 14. The new science of criminology 15. Crime and mental illness 16. The political prisoner 17. Criminal justice under dictatorships 18. Human rights from the League of Nations to the United Nations 19. Life after dictatorship 20. Police states and carceral regimes 21. New democratic movements to reform justice
Syllabus