CCJ5625 – Midterm Exam
You must answer one of the essay questions below. Though essay length will vary depending on style of writing, you should expect to write roughly 4-7 double-spaced pages. Be sure to address every aspect of the question.
Keep in mind that this essay question is testing your knowledge and understanding of the reading materials from the first half of the course, as well as your ability to integrate and think critically about that material. It is not enough to simply summarize the topics you have read. You must give careful thought to the material and to the questions, and then integrate and interpret the material at a depth of thought that is appropriate for a graduate-level course.
Exam Questions (choose one)
The titles of chapters 2-4 of the textbook refer to communities “as Socially Disorganized,” “as a System,” and “as the Truly Disadvantaged.” Describe the fundamental arguments of each of these approaches to communities and crime. For each approach, discuss the key factors that are expected to affect crime rates, and explain whythe approach expects these factors to affect crime. Be sure that your discussion of these approaches makes it clear how they are distinct from one another.
2. In chapter 4 of the textbook, the authors note that the approaches to communities and crime discussed in chapters 2 & 3 (the “Chicago School” perspective) are similar in some ways to the approach described in chapter 4 (the “truly disadvantaged” perspective). However, they place stronger emphasis on the differences between these approaches. Begin your essay with a general description of the “Chicago School” and “Truly Disadvantaged” approaches. In the remainder of your essay, explain what Wilcox, Cullen, and Feldmeyer mean that the truly disadvantaged perspective “offers a distinctly different vision of communities and crime than we had seen up to this point” and that it focuses “more squarely on structural forces” than on cultural explanations (p. 61).
Your essay must be submitted as a Microsoft Word or pdf document, and it must adhere to the following guidelines:
All lines must be double-spaced.
Use either Arial or Times New Roman font at 12pt.
Margins must be no larger than 1 inch.
Do not include a title page.
The first line of your answer should be “Question 1” or “Question 2” indicating which question you are answering. Do not type the actual question in your document.
Grammar, spelling, punctuation, and formatting will be an important part of your grade.
Very important: You must include parenthetical citations to the readings in the text of your paper (e.g. Wilcox, Cullen, and Feldmeyer 2018). However, you are strongly encouraged to avoid using many direct quotes. Rather than quoting the author word-for-word, you should put everything into your own words and then cite the author(s) at the end of the sentence. Essays with more than a 3 direct quotes will lose points. The best essays will have no direct quotes (but still include parenthetical citations!).
Another important note about citations: You do not need to repeatedly cite a source over and over in the text of your paper. When you begin discussing information from a particular source, you should cite the source at the end of the sentence where you start discussing it (e.g. Wilcox, Cullen, and Feldmeyer, 2018). However, if you continue presenting information from that same source, you do not need to keep citing it. The reader will assume that you are still discussing that source. If you move on to write about a different source, and then later return to the first source, then you should cite the first source again.
Book for reference page
Communities and Crime: An Enduring American Challenge. 2017. Wilcox, Pamela, Francis T. Cullen, Ben Feldmeyer. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ISBN: 9781592139743
