Honors Courses Views Crime through Sociological Lens
By Phyllis Shier, WSU Honors College – peshier@wsu.edu
James F. Short Distinguished Professor of Sociology Jennifer Schwartz encourages her students to sleuth in HONORS 370, Global Issues in Social Sciences using statistics to examine global crime trends, patterns, and causes, and to assess societal responses and implications for individuals and communities. Or, as she states in her syllabus, to “demystify crime’s complexities.”
Schwartz created the course as the newest Elma Ryan-Bornander Honors Distinguished Chair, a two-year residency awarded to outstanding WSU faculty members at the forefront of research, pedagogy, and scholarship. The endowment offers two years of salary enhancement, plus funding for research, honors course design, and honors student assistantships.
Providing the new course in her area of expertise allowed Schwartz to systemize her knowledge while seeing things anew from a student’s perspective, she said.
“It’s exciting for me to be able to teach this course with really engaged students who want to discuss the material a lot.”
Schwartz has studied crime patterns and trends for twenty years. In 2019, she focused her research on six rural counties in eastern central Washington where an uptick in incarceration follows a disturbing national trend. According to the Vera Institute of Justice,* who co-funded pilot research in this area, incarceration rates are now highest in America’s rural counties, outpacing urban centers where rates have declined due to reform efforts. This surprising trend defies the fact that rural counties have substantially lower crime rates than cities.
To unpack the problem, Schwartz analyzes booking and release trends of these six jails alongside fellow WSU researcher Jennifer Sherman, who conducts interviews with people who’ve been in one or more of these jails about their experiences. Their work is supported by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), with additional pilot funding from the Arnold Foundation.
“I’m trying to understand what’s happening and how recidivism or jail reentry fuels some of these patterns and trends,” Schwartz said. NIJ funding allows Schwartz and Sherman to employ a program coordinator and to work with community stakeholder groups that often comprise district court judges, superior court judges, prosecution attorneys, jail administrators, and various social service providers. The researchers compare and contrast their results to draw inferences on big data patterns which, Schwartz said, oftentimes mirror back to stakeholder groups the trends that they already suspect.
“Many people think “oh, jails—they’re holding bad guys, right? It’s not always the case,” Schwartz said. Instead, she found that about 80 percent of people held in rural jails have not been adjudicated.
“It’s people with procedural problems, essentially; they’re legally innocent… or they have not yet been sentenced. People are held pre-trial, so they’ll show up for their case.”
The reality of the trend was nevertheless surprising to the stakeholder groups when Schwartz presented them with the data.
“They sort of had to think, ‘Okay, is this the best use of our time and space—to hold people while they’re waiting for a judge to hear about whether they’re innocent or guilty? —That’s a piece of it—another piece is that these communities need greater access to mental and physical health care and to treatment options for alcohol and drug abuse,” Schwartz said.
Applying a theoretical framework to data analysis works on a multitude of scales and across environments, Schwartz said. In the classroom, she has students apply sociological theories to proactively create successful group dynamics.
Much like crime scene investigators analyze evidence to solve crimes, Schwartz breaks her class into three-person “CSI teams” to investigate crime data from different countries, looking for big picture national trends and social characteristics. Teams apply and compare crime theories across venues for both broad and focused results.
Before they do that, however, each of the CSI groups establishes initial group values and norms and decides how to address problems when norms are broken. Building consensus around core values, anticipating problems, and using conflict resolution techniques, Schwartz said, leads groups to set realistic expectations and desired outcomes. Only then do the CSI groups tackle their assigned nations, studying them as a whole before focusing on how crime problems or different social arrangements lead to certain types of punishments.
“We’re trying to unpack how and why crimes occur and how societies respond to it…,” Schwartz said.
Comparing data across countries gives students perspective on national differences and the social characteristics of places before looking at how they punish.
After studying crime at the global level, Schwartz introduces students to the Washington rural jails research she is conducting, as it exemplifies how we punish in the United States.
“All these processes that we’re unpacking should work at the nation state level, it should work at their team level, and it should work for eastern central Washington; working with these concepts across all different venues—that’s what I’m trying to get them to do.”
Schwartz was drawn to studying criminology in part because of the socially constructed nature of homicide, in which the same mortal outcome isn’t always considered criminal.
“We think about homicide or killing another person, well, in wartime it’s desirable, right?” she said. Another instance where killing may be acceptable is in the case of self-defense. How societies define where the line is drawn between odd behavior, undesirable behavior, and criminal behavior is based on social factors, Schwartz said.
Working in local rural communities allows Schwartz to realize the university’s land grant mission, something that’s very important to her. But these communities can be suspicious of outside support at times, she said, especially from those who don’t comprehend the unique dynamics they face.
“Understanding that we’re coming from a rural community, I think, makes stakeholders willing to work with us. We try to find the low-hanging fruit that can make a big difference in people’s lives with small tweaks and changes. The university’s reputation and land grant mission are helpful—it makes us more trusted.”
Schwartz will receive Bornander funding through 2025. In addition to the new course, she plans to further involve honors students in her research, potentially providing opportunities for students to visit rural communities to observe courtroom processes, to collect and analyze data and create reports, and to conduct interviews.
“I feel very lucky that I’ve been able to be at Washington State this long, to have this research support, and to get these opportunities to work with honors students; it’s been super thrilling.”
Source:
*June 13, 2017 Vera research report:
https://www.vera.org/newsroom/rural-america-has-highest-jail-incarceration-rates-in-the-u-s-despite-low-crime-rates-new-report-reveals
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