Course Details

Therapeutic Criminal Justice

Using a comparative lens, this course will introduce a variety of therapeutic, restorative, and problem-solving mechanisms that have been developed and implemented in criminal justice systems both in US and worldwide. We will explore the potential of the criminal justice system, by adopting non-punitive notions of justice, to achieve goals that go beyond its classis, traditional goals, such as enhancing the well-being of its various stakeholders, empowering communities, restoring relationships between law breakers and victims, encouraging reconciliation, and providing holistic rehabilitation to offenders. The course will address the tension between the criminal justice system’s traditional goals and the therapeutic-oriented goals. We will discuss the question of whether the criminal justice system is the right domain to promote therapeutic goals given potential risks of net-widening, stigmatization and its collateral consequences, deprivation of due process rights, paternalism, and coercion that arise when therapeutically oriented goals are promoted within the criminal legal regime, especially in societies that suffer from racial and socio-economic inequalities.

Catalog Number: CRIM 605

Additional Course Information: Open to First Year Students


Course History

Winter 2024
Title: Therapeutic Criminal Justice
Faculty:
Section: 1     Credits: 2.0
Capacity: 25     Actual: 25