The killing of George Floyd by a police officer and the subsequent protests around the country have fueled a national introspection about law enforcement in America.
Faculty
Last Saturday, about halfway through Part 1 of the ASU Center for the Study of Race and Democracy’s two-part Impact Arizona lecture series titled “Race, Crisis and the Future of Democracy,” which was organized in the aftermath of the May 25 police-involved killing of Minneapolis resident George Floyd, the New York Times sent its subscribers a news alert that yet another black man, 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks of Atlanta, had died at the hands of law enforcement.
“Defund the police” has been a popular rallying cry at recent protests across the nation.
Originated by the Black Lives Matter movement and police reform activists, the slogan was introduced to the public last week and is quickly picking up steam with politicians, city councils and mayors throughout the country.
The premature death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer caught on video May 25 raises questions as to how a call to investigate a person suspected of forgery can end up in tragedy.
In the graphic footage recorded by a bystander, a handcuffed Floyd is on the ground, face-down, and struggles to breathe as one of three officers holding him down forces his knee on Floyd’s neck for several minutes while ignoring pleas from the 46-year-old man and onlookers to stop.
In the United States, managing the tensions between the privileged, politically dominant classes of society and its politically, socially and economically disadvantaged classes, to which communities of color have disproportionately belonged, has always been a central concern of police and the criminal justice system. Some U.S. police agencies were explicitly established in the Civil War era to help preserve slavery and white supremacy.
The logistical challenges of teaching a class inside a state prison are complicated enough during a typical semester, let alone one that includes a pandemic.
This spring, an Arizona State University professor and a doctoral student were instructing 10 students based at the Downtown Phoenix campus, plus 10 more who happen to be men serving criminal sentences at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Florence.
To recognize alumni of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (SCCJ) who have engaged their communities in exceptional ways, the School proudly announces its 2020 alumni awards.
There’s nothing like seeing professionals doing what they do where they actually do it to motivate a student toward making a satisfying career choice. Just ask Cassity Sopha, a junior in Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions’ School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (CCJ).
Three months before getting his bachelor’s degree, Quin Patterson had no desire to go to graduate school.
After studying at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (CCJ), part of the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions, Patterson was looking forward to completing school and possibly pursuing a career in law enforcement.
Karla Chicuate was intellectually acquainted with the morally evil practice of grooming, abducting and selling human beings for labor or sexual exploitation when she traveled in January to west Africa.
After all, she had been working as an educator with the city of Tempe’s Sexual Relationship and Violence Department for about a year and a half when her 10-day excursion began, and she intentionally chose the assignment to work with women and children who had endured human trafficking.