This 6-7 page paper will be based on the neighborhood you wrote about for your first paper. Or, maybe you spend a lot of time at your workplace, you can write about that neighborhood instead. For this essay, you are expected to collect primary data, by conducting interviews (remember, you will not be able to interview anyone until you have completed your CITI certification). You will use the interview data you collect to include in the essay. For this essay you are expected to state more than your own personal opinion and views (as you did with Essay no. 1). You are expected to conduct some extra research into your neighborhood, such as crime rates, health reports, and community data. The library can help you with this research.
You will write an essay similar to the one you wrote for the first paper, but now you will write it with more context – after an entire semester together you will now have an understanding of several perspectives related to the city, how and why are neighborhoods look and feel how they do, the public policies that impact our everyday lives, and how all of these impact how we see our neighborhoods as “safe” or “good” or “bad.” You will also have gone on at least two neighborhood tours with me.
Some other things you should keep in mind as you write your essay and interview people about your neighborhood: Who lives there? What is around you? Are there parks? Are there community centers, churches, schools, gardens, etc? Does your neighborhood go by a nickname? Is it known today by a name that is realitively new? Are there changes happening in your community? What are the neighborhood’s demographic makeup over time? What makes your neighborhood unique? Are there any cultural events or activities in your neighborhood?
For this paper I also want you to interview 2-3 people and ask them about their perception of crime and disorder in your neighborhood. You can interview anyone: a family member, neighbor, friend, teacher, police officer, librarian, even the local deli owner! You will use quotations from those interviews in your paper. In addition to including the quotes and other interview day, you will discuss in your paper public policy and its relationship to Criminal Justice and the Urban Environment where you live. This is where you will also use the secondary data, to give some context on what the folks are telling you. So, for example, if a person tells you “crime is at an all time high!” Then you will be able to say something about that comment, based on the data you collected on crime rates in your community.
This essay will give you an opportunity to write about space, place, and our built environment as it relates to crime, our notions of crime, and our system of criminal justice. You should write this paper within the context of a student who has taken a class on criminal justice and the urban environment, and has read articles and reviewed materials that looks at the role all of the above have on our lives. Things to have in mind as you write this final paper:
Spaces and how we navigate them can depend on the meaning we give these areas and whether or not we feel as if we have a sense of belonging or membership, or if others think we belong there. Name 2-3 places that you navigate differently depending on this context.
The above navigation can be racialized – meaning, you might feel differently in a space depending on the race of those around you, or, people might make you feel as if you belong or not, depending on your/their race. Name how space is navigated in your neighborhood differently because of race.
Discuss both tours taken this semester.
Please do not limit your paper to simply responding to the above points. You are expected to demonstrate critical and analysitcal thinking, as well as be able to incorporate the information reviewed during the semster and taken several tours as a way to see firsthand some of the perspectives discusse
