INSTRUCTIONS:
Paper proposalThe proposal is designed to prepare you to write your final paper. Things you need to do in your proposal:Identify a crime topic that interests you — this can be anything from new laws, emerging crime trends, new classifications of crimes, racial inequalities in sentencing, the political significance of the media preoccupation with sensationalist crimes, depictions of crime in popular culture (video games etc). You should identify a problem that you wish to study about your topic. For example, if you are interested in bill C-51, you might identify “the erosion of rights of suspects” as your problem. If you are interested in the way DNA is used to explain why people commit crimes, you might identify “the return of biological theories of criminality” as a problem to study. Maybe you are tired of arguments that violent video games make children more violent, and wish to refute this using some real research findings. Concisely (4-8 sentences) describe exactly what the topic is, what the problem is, and why it is an issueIdentify data sources — you are studying a crime problem, so you need to get information about what it is and why it is a problem. If you are skeptical about the falling crime rate in Canada, the methodologies and results of the GSS and the CSI would be reasonable data sources. If you are concerned with prisoners’ conditions in Canadian jails, you might identify some personal testimonies or studies of prisoners’ conditions. If your problem is the “negative depiction of X population as criminals/ deviants in the media”, then you might identify specific media stories that demonize your population of choice.