Seminar Ferguson What Happened What Now Policing and Criminal Justice in the USA

In 2014, protests broke out across the United States in reaction to widely perceived injustices concerning the policing of minority communities and the use of excessive and deadly force. In this class we will look through the lens of recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and in Staten Island, New York, and then back through history to study policing and the criminal justice system in America. We will focus on the tensions between the goals of crime control, public safety, the safety of law enforcement officers, and individual rights. We will study the applicable Amendments to the Constitution, or Bill of Rights and the law interpreting them to better understand the process of policing, charging decisions by prosecutors and the limitations on government power. We will also look mainstream media accounts as sources to recount police citizen interactions and the protests over the outcomes in Missouri and New York. Students will be asked throughout the course and in their final papers to critically examine the American model of policing and criminal justice against these sources and to come up with their own recommendations for changes in policing American communities and policies for holding law enforcement accountable for using excessive or deadly force against the public. W3-Professur für Nordamerikanische Kulturgeschichte mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Politik und Sozialgeschichte der USA und der transatlantischen Beziehungen (Univ. Prof. Dr. Christof Mauch) B.A.-Nebenfach SLK: Diese Veranstaltung entspricht in WP 4 dem Kurstyp -Begleitkurs zu Themen der Kultur- und Medienwissenschaften m/n/o/p- (WP 4.0.14/16/18/20). Sie erhalten 3 ECTS, wenn Sie entweder eine Klausur (30-60 Min.) schreiben oder eine mündliche Prüfung (15-30 Min.) ablegen oder ein Thesenpapier (3.000-6.000 Zeichen) oder Übungsaufgaben (3.000-6.000 Zeichen) fertigen. Die Prüfung muss benotet sein. Die Wahl der Prüfungsart liegt beim Dozenten. LMU München SoSe 2015 Engert Michelle