Quantifying Injustice: How Integrative Learning Can Bring Together Theory and Praxis

• In Event: Roundtable: Critical Teaching: Teaching Critically About Injustice and Inequality with Experiential Learning Strategies

Abstract

This presentation models how integrative learning experiences outside of the classroom can be used in Criminal Justice classes to not only empirically and powerfully demonstrate theory, but also give students a sense of empowerment to affect change. I discuss how at LaGuardia Community College, an urban college in Queens, NY, all full-time faculty in the Criminal Justice Department have implemented the "PROP Court Monitoring" assignment. This assignment has criminal justice students attend misdemeanor arraignments, record demographic information for all defendants, as well as the dispositions of each case. While the data sheets are used to produce reports for PROP (the Police Reform Organizing Project, a nonprofit dedicated to ending Broken Windows/ racialized policing), the students then have to connect their data and experience to Alexander's thesis in The New Jim Crow and draw conclusions. I discuss relevant outcomes of this project, the consequences of broadly implementing this type of integrative assignment, and possibilities for students to use assignments as a "jumping off" point for activism in their own communities.

Author

• Colleen Eren, CUNY LaGuardia