SOC 362.01/.

02
Reaction Paper 1
Due Date:
Section 1:
Section 2:

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Monday, September 14, 2015

Guidelines:
Please critically and thoughtfully respond to the following question. For this
assignment, I encourage you to write in the first person and to strive for connections to
you own experiences and understandings of the community in which you live. The goal
of this assignment is to acquaint me with your writing style, voice and your orientation
to questions of crime and justice.
Please:

Ensure your name is on your work (header or footer)

Double space, 1 margins, 12 point font
Your written response should be approximately 1.5-2 pages (3 pages max)
There is no need to cite outside material, however, should you elect to
reference a newspaper clipping, a blog post or something that is not your own
original thought, please refer to the guidelines for ASA formatting style for
citation.

Question:
Criminology is often thought of as a branch of sociology that deals with the science of crime. In fact,
the (re)telling of the history of criminology appears to be a rather linear project that can lead people to
think that criminology is a value-free enterprise that takes social facts prima facie and comes up with
some objective truth about the source of crime and what the most technically correct way to address
this social problem is.
Part of what makes science science is the reliance on objectivity and dispassionate analysis by the
scientist. According to one source, our responsibility is to be as objective as possible:
Without a firm grip on objectivity, barriers for communication, learning, advocacy, and
education are inevitable. Real learning relies upon the necessity of looking on with the intent to
and success of gathering only the facts in detail- without selectivity. The power of influence rests
in the hand of the writer. For good or bad, benevolent or malevolent, to contribute to society's
understanding or stifle it, an author or researcher holds the responsibility to the rest of
humankind to be accurate and fair in reporting observations of something new and alien.
Knowledge and education depend on it.
(http://www.srwolf.com/wolfsoc/soc204/204archives/2008/01/30/the_importance_of_objectiv
ity.php)

Others, however, call into question the whole masquerade of objectivity and think that it is a foolish
exercise:
Why should we cherish objectivity, as if ideas were innocent, as if they dont serve one
interest or another? Surely, we want to be objective if that means telling the truth as we see it,
not concealing information that may be embarrassing to our point of view. But we dont want to
be objective if it means pretending that ideas dont play a part in the social struggles of our
time, that we dont take sides in those struggles.
Indeed, it is impossible to be neutral. In a world already moving in certain directions, where
wealth and power are already distributed in certain ways, neutrality means accepting the way
things are now. It is a world of clashing interests war against peace, nationalism against
internationalism, equality against greed, and democracy against elitism and it seems to me
both impossible and undesirable to be neutral in those conflicts.
Howard Zinn, Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology
So, my question to you is:

Where do you stand on the prospect of criminology being a science that relies, among other
things, on objectivity and impartiality of the criminologist?
Identify something about the field of criminology that interests you and explain how and why
you have come to want to learn more about this topic.
What, in your opinion, is the benefit to studying criminology?