Course Details

Course offered Winter 2012

Honors 231 B: In Your Name: A Service-Learning Experience in Seattle's Criminal Justice System (SSc)

Honors 231 B: In Your Name: A Service-Learning Experience in Seattle's Criminal Justice System (SSc)

SLN 19901 (View UW registration info »)

Claudia Jensen (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Phone: 206-543-6848
Email: cjensen@uw.edu

Credits: 5
Limit: 10 students

As a citizen in Washington State, you select judges and serve as jurors, you pay for police and public defenders, and you buy the razor wire and the food for our prisons. The criminal justice system is truly in your hands and its actions are carried out in your name. This course will explore these responsibilities in two ways. The first is through a series of lectures by specialists at the University and by those involved in Seattle’s criminal justice system (police, prosecuting attorneys, defense attorneys, Department of Corrections officials, and others).

The main focus of the course, however, is the collaboration you will enter into with former prisoners who are students at the Post-Prison Education Program here in Seattle (http://postprisonedu.org/index.php). You and the PPEP students will create projects you will carry out together over the course of Winter Quarter and you’ll present your results at the end of the class. Projects will be determined jointly and may cover a variety of media and subjects; all will relate to the criminal justice system and its impact on individuals or the community. Students will also engage in extensive reading and will be responsible for a series of written responses about the readings, the lectures, and their experiences in the collaborative projects.

NOTE: this class is limited to 10 students; no overloads (if the course is full, you may enroll in Honors 397A, a one-credit course for which you will attend the lectures for one hour per week but will not be engaged in the collaborative projects). Preference will be given to juniors and seniors. Please note that the meeting session on Saturday, Jan. 7 is mandatory. (All of the students in the Post-Prison Education Program are enrolled in area community colleges; this Saturday session will ensure that we can all meet together at least once and it is a crucial aspect of our collaborative work.)

Honors students are encouraged to pursue receiving Experiential Learning credit for this course (http://depts.washington.edu/uwhonors/reqs/exp/).