READ and FOLLOW these instructions precisely! Failure to do so will result in a grade of "NC."

PURPOSE: CJAx430 is a unique and challenging experience. Accordingly, so is the writing requirement for the course. The experiential component of the course includes a highly structured itinerary of five days of closely supervised, intensive tours of from seven to ten state and federal prisons around California. The institutions are carefully selected to maximize the students' exposure to a broad variety of institutional settings, architectural models, program and staff orientations, and criminal offenders. The purpose of the paper is to enable the student to document his or her critical observations about prison along a number of these dimensions.

My hope is that you will look back on this paper as some of your best thinking about one of your most salient experiences in college. Accordingly, I don’t want you to embarrass yourself with bad writing. Take particular care regarding grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors! Papers that are inadequate in this regard will receive a grade of "NC."

RESEARCH: Your essay is to be entitled "The Reality of the Incarceration Experience." It must incorporate many of your own observations, but it must also be substantially informed by your study of a slice of prison literature, which must include Hard TimeI, 3rd by Robert Johnson (Brooks/Cole, 2002), in addition to a book of YOUR choosing authored by an inmate, former inmate, employee, or close observer of the prison system, like Reflections on the Wall by Mike Posey, In the Belly of the Beast, by Jack Abbott, Hot House, by Pete Earley, or Crime and Punishment: Inside Views, by Johnson and Toch, Newjack, by Ted Conover, etc..

FORMAT: The paper must be typed according to the following specifications: 1 1/2-spaces, typed, 12-point font, with 1 inch margins(left, right, top, bottom): Label each section and begin each section on a new page; number your pages. Simply staple your paper; do not use a binder. The paper must consist of four sections, as follows.

1. literature review (2 pg.): Begin your essay with a discussion of what the assigned and selected literature says about prison. That is, what do the publications say about incarceration?
   (Your paper must include appropriately formatted citations and references, just like any well-documented term paper. You may use any approved official social science citation format, e.g., Justice Quarterly.)
2. your assessment (2 pg.): What did YOU find to be true, with respect to the topics discussed in Part 1. Base your writing on your personal observations. Integrate what you have read in the professional literature with what you have seen in prison. Do you agree or disagree with the observations of the experts? Did your observations confirm what you read?
3. critical essay (3 pg.): Close your paper with a carefully crafted essay of what you learned from--including the most important lessons of--this experience. Be thoughtful and creative. This should be the heart of your paper and reflect your very best thinking and writing about what the trip and the experience meant to you.
4. appendix: the log (1 pg. per institution): The log/diary is your personal record of the PrisonTour--your detailed and thoughtful observations and critical impressions of what you saw, heard, and felt at each of the facilities we visited. I am less interested in recitations of statistics--e.g., population, staffing patterns, etc.--than I am in learning what you found particularly interesting, remarkable, or memorable about each visit, i.e., what struck you? what surprised you? what did you see and feel that you found most notable and memorable? Devote a minimum of one page to each facility. Begin your description of each facility on a new page; and start the discussion of each prison with a memorable quote or expression you heard or saw there which summarizes a particularly salient discovery or observation made at or about that institution.
   
   Write your paper to yourself, as something you will want to review in five or ten years, in order to learn something about yourself--where you have been, what you have been, and what you have become--intellectually and philosophically. Above all, make it mean something to you. If your paper is nothing special to you as you create it, I doubt that it ever will be; and you will have missed a great opportunity.

DEADLINE: The paper is due at noon on Monday, three weeks from the departure date of your tour. Start and finish your paper immediately upon your return, or you will not complete it on time. NOTE: the time is ample, so the deadline is absolute! Don’t put it off. Turn in your original, not a copy. Papers will not be returned, so keep a copy for yourself.