Writing Project 3 - Complete Draft
- Draft Due
Monday, May 7, 2018
- Length
4+ Pages
You will each write, individually, an essay in response to the book. This essay will be 3-4 pages long, and should provide a summary of the book and your argument (supported by textual evidence) about what the book reveals about how the purposes of justice are (or are not) served in the United States. -From the Overview of Writing Project 3
At this point, we’ve worked our way through several pieces of writing in which we’ve interacted with our Book Club book in various ways. We’ve done a lot of the work that will build up to our Complete Draft of Writing Project 3, but we haven’t done everything. We’ve built many of the different parts of our breakfast machine, but we aren’t 100% sure what it’s all going to make when we assemble it.
Now’s the time for us to put it all together.
Your Task
For your Complete Draft of Writing Project 3, please write a paper of at least four pages in length in which you answer the following question:
What does your Book Club Book have to say about how the purposes of justice are (or are not) being fulfilled in the United States criminal justice system?
Things to Think About and Do
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To complete this task, I’ll expect you to use examples and quotations from the book to support your argument.
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I also encourage you to connect your book to outside texts. This can mean the article that we wrote about for Phase 2; it can also mean Mistrial, the readings we’ve done about the Philosophies, and even other Book Club Books (if you find something relevant in other groups’ presentations).
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In constructing this paper, you can and should use writing from Phases 1-3 of this Writing Project. (This is one of those times where it’s okay to copy and paste.) However, please also note that those Phases won’t be quite enough to accomplish the task that I’m asking for above. You will likely need to do some new writing to explore the above question in depth.
This is a big question, and you have a lot of freedom in how you answer this question. You’ll notice that this time, I’m not asking you to restrict yourself to one of the Philosophies; rather, I’m asking you to use the thinking we’ve done about justice throughout the semester to explore this book in depth.
Philosophies of Justice
- Retribution: The purpose of the justice system is to make sure people suffer for the crimes they have committed.
- Rehabilitation: The purpose of the justice system is to make sure people who have committed crimes do not do so again.
- Deterrence: The purpose of the justice system is to discourage people from committing crimes.
- Restoration: The purpose of the justice system is to help criminals right the wrongs they have done and make it up to their victims.