Thinking About Criminal Justice

Thinking About Criminal Justice: A Reader helps students cultivate greater levels of critical thinking skills and question long-standing criminal justice policies and aspects of the criminal justice system. The anthology presents readers with a tool called a Critical Thinking Scan (CTS), which challenges them to analyze the readings in the text from various angles and to focus internally to push through their innate personal biases and consider new ideas and viewpoints.

The anthology is organized into four distinct units. Unit I introduces critical thinking as an essential part of criminal justice and addresses issues of racialized bias and injustice within the discipline. Unit II invites student to consider the types of assumptions they make about the seriousness of certain types of crime and how these assumptions shape their points of view. The readings examine white supremacist terror, cybercrime, and voter fraud. In Unit III, students learn about the intersection of racism, sexism, and the criminal justice system. The final unit addresses good citizenship and the modern call for criminal justice reform with articles that address police-community interactions, sex work, sex trafficking, wrongful convictions, cash bail, and the War on Drugs. Throughout, students are encouraged to apply the CTS method developed by the editor to ask questions, acknowledge bias, reason through logic, diversify thought, and exhibit fair-mindedness.

Thinking About Criminal Justice is a thought-provoking and essential reader for programs and courses in the discipline.