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4. Final Essay Exam (25% course grade), December 5, 2021, not more than 3000 words (maximum) with questions based on topics 4-6 to be opened on Canvas 48 hours to deadline. Always reflect race-class-gender awareness even when not asked.

If you can type 50 words per minute, you can complete your draft in one hour and start editing it in time to submit before the deadline.

If you miss the deadline, feel free to use the ‘lifeline’ and email your essay to me without punishment but try your best to meet the deadline in preparation for the real world where turning up late for a probation appointment counts as a technical violation that could result in detention, where grants application deadlines are rarely extended, where the game clock runs out and points are not allowed, and where late payment of bills results in penalties. Let’s Go Hokies.

Please attempt an essay-type answer to ONE of the following questions, not more than 3000 words with at least five scholarly references. Use the rubrics to guide you:

1. Pfohl wrote that he discovered massive cheating by students in one of his classes but he did not seek to punish them, instead he used the experience as an opportunity to teach the honor code to the students. Review the policy of penal abolitionism in our class and compare with the punitive view by functionalists that deviance is necessary for the society to punish deviance and reward conformity, thereby reinforcing the values of the society. Do you agree with the people of South Africa that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a better way to address the crimes of apartheid than through penal law?
2. The social disorganization perspective posits that there are multiracial inner-city ‘delinquency areas’ where more deviance is found than in the suburbs. Critique this theory with reference to the frequency of school shootings in the US to explain why such violent crimes tend to happen more in the suburbs or why lynching happened more in rural areas than in big cities. Do you agree with the learning theory of Gabriel Tarde that people kill because of imitation? Provide examples of ‘radical non-intervention’ through which the society changed the label attached to some crimes and say whether or not that was effective in reducing criminality.
3. ‘Without critical thought, we are bound to the only form of social life that we know’, according to Pfohl. Apply race-class-gender intersectionality theory to the trial of the three white men who were convicted of killing a black jogger in Georgia. Imagine a more humane future where people reject racism, sexism, homophobia, and imperialism as advocated by Angela Davis and by Pfohl. As a policy consultant, what policies would you recommend to make the world a better place from a criminology perspective?