Numbers Don’t Lie

Description

Assignment:

Listen to the With(in) podcast, Episode 4: Numbers Don’t Lie, with Professor Jeff Lin ( https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-4-numbers-dont-lie/id1478113819?i=1000452707277)

While you are listening, consider how the four people in the podcast are developing an understanding of the science and “numbers” involved in criminal justice through their conversation with each other. This podcast is a convergence of two people with “lived reality” who are currently serving sentences in the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC), Denise Presson and Andrew Draper, the founder, and director of the DU Prison Arts Initiative, Ashley Hamilton, and Jeff Lin, a criminal justice scholar who teaches sociology and criminology at the University of Denver. All four are stakeholders in conversations that revolved around criminal justice. You are also a stakeholder in their conversation as a listener and student studying criminal justice.

Although you will not be writing a “conversation” for your Literature Review, you are being asked to synthesize information and analyses from multiple different research sources and perspectives, which is like moderating and distilling conversations from multiple sources about the same issue. But how do you synthesize and moderate a conversation on the page with the research sources that you’ll be reading? Well, part of the job of a successful moderator or synthesizer is to “listen” very close to what your sources are saying, no matter what medium they are presented in, textual, visual, oral, hybrid, etc., so that you can begin to extract the important themes from the conversation. Engaging in source assessment is an important way to develop this ability.

Take notes while you’re listening to the podcast, noting the insights, information, and overarching questions and themes that stand out to you. Think about the sources that we’ve watched and read so far and if there are any similarities or convergences between those sources and this podcast. Also, what are the differences between the With(in) podcast and the other three sources? (Three sources: College Behind Bars, Pt. 1: “No one ever taught me any of that,” “In Spite of Prison,” by Angel E. Sanchez, and “Maintaining racial inequality through crime control,” by Justin M. Smith.)

Questions:

The podcast illuminates the importance of aggregate numbers in multiple different ways, such as the financial aspects (costs effectiveness, states running out of money, etc), disproportionate impact on certain communities (less white the deeper you go into the system, etc.), and even the numbers legislators use to create sentencing laws for drug and other crimes (amount of drug, length of sentence, etc). Lin talks about how the human impacts of incarceration ripple outwards and are quantifiable in terms of people who are not working, not being parents, not being members of a community, as well as the impact of mental health concerns, issues of marriageability, job prospects, and the employment rate once people are released. Lin emphasizes that the “science” of these numbers doesn’t really translate until the state or political system is ready to accept them. Why, or why not, is it important to consider the politics of policymaking? What happens with the numbers from all this research if there is no action taken on them at the policy level? Why is the convergence of empirical evidence and human impact an important conversation to be having right now?
There are many questions that were brought up in this podcast. For example:
What is the end goal of criminal justice research?
Should scientists also be activists?
What is the effect of prison?
Do we even know why we send people to prison?
Who is a criminal?
Who is not a criminal?
Who is most likely to get caught when they commit a crime?
What happens when you take a mother out of a home?
Who’s responsible for the healing and shift of the disparities within certain communities?
So what?
How am I helping the world?
(Many others that I haven’t listed.)

Pick one of the above questions and write a paragraph unpacking your ideas about it, or make up your own question. Plan to bring in a source to bolster your insights and help substantiate your thoughts. The source can be something specific from this podcast, something specific from one of the other three sources we’ve assessed, or something specific from an outside source. Or from multiple sources.

Make a list of four to six questions that came up for you as a stakeholder in the conversations brought up in this specific podcast, “Numbers Don’t Lie.” Briefly unpack why each of these questions are important for you to ask as a student of criminal justice (2-5 sentences for each question).