Thomas Cline

RC 2001-122

Perhaps the most important factor in a criminal case is context; i.e. what was happening

before, during, and after an incident took place. Similarly, any written piece discussing an issue

or topic in the criminal justice field demands context before you launch into your explanation.

All 5 of the pieces referenced begin with an introduction of some sorts, offering context to the

main point of discussion the author or authors will be focusing on. Whether through statistics or

simply stating historical facts, each introduction was a largely unbiased information dump to

give its readers some semblance of what was going on prior to the issue undertaken in the piece.

Following the unbiased introduction, each piece then made a claim in the way of an

argumentative essay, taking a stance and offering bias with their topics. Take for instance

Feldman and Bassett’s piece on the deaths of those in police custody in the American criminal

justice system. Right from the beginning, after their fact about the demands of the Black Lives

Matter protests, the authors state that a lack of a system documenting deaths in the system is a

failure of public health infrastructure(Feldman and Bassett 2021). “Failure” on the scale of a

national organization conjures the idea of a catastrophic oversight, disappointing an entire

country. While still using facts to back up their claims, the piece feels passionate and accusatory.

By contrast, Boyd’s piece and Tobechukwu, Nonyelum, and Ayres’s piece read much more

calmly. Boyd’s piece on Canadian radio treads the line between a science report and an opinion

piece very well, lending to the piece’s composedness. Perhaps the biggest contrast between the

piece’s comes from Camp, Voigt, Jurafsky, and Eberhardt’s piece about the phonetics of

officer’s voices during traffic stops. Being a study, the piece attempts to read as unbiased as

possible, thus leading to cool language and a sagiocus tone.

 The contrast between these piece’s reveals a unique truth to Criminal Justice’s discourse;

it possesses an exceptional array of emotions. Due to its construction possessing multiple parts of

our society, Criminal Justice requires multiple trains of thought and different styles of

expressiveness so as to help represent the incalculable amount of ways that people in this world

think and express themselves. The issue arises when talking about controversial issues such as

police brutality and violence, such as with Bassett and Feldman’s piece on deaths in police

custody. Their language is peppered with demanding rhetoric, even beginning with it in the title

of their piece(Public Health can and Must do Better). It is this demanding rhetoric that

demonstrates the strong emotions behind the constant discussion that makes up Criminal Justice.

Criminal Justice is a very unique field of work, as the results of studies and cases change

lives every day. The discourse in the field reflects that, with many different types of articles and

ways of writing being present. While you could make that argument for any field of study,

Criminal Justice is unique in that it encapsulates many other fields into its discourse, with

influences from science, politics, and math represented in its writing. Very few fields can make

that claim, and it is why criminal justice’s discourse will forever remain relevant.
References

Brittain, Eleanor, and Keith Tuffin. 2017. “Ko Tēhea Te Ara Tika? A Discourse Analysis of
Māori Experience in the Criminal Justice System.” New Zealand Journal of Psychology
46 (2): 99–107. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=a9h&AN=127414858&site=eds-live&scope=site

Boyd, Susan. 2014. “The Criminal Addict: Canadian Radio Documentary Discourse,
1957-1969.” Contemporary Drug Problems 41 (2): 201–32.
https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=edshol&AN=edshol.hein.journals.condp41.15&site=eds-
live&scope=site

Camp, Nicholas P., Rob Voigt, Dan Jurafsky, and Jennifer L. Eberhardt. 2021. “The Thin Blue
Waveform: Racial Disparities in Officer Prosody Undermine Institutional Trust in the
Police.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, July.
doi:10.1037/pspa0000270.supp (Supplemental)\

Feldman, Justin M., and Mary T. Bassett. 2021. “Monitoring Deaths in Police Custody: Public
Health Can and Must Do Better.” American Journal of Public Health 111 (S2): S69–72.
doi:10.2105/AJPH.2021.306213

Tobechukwu, Onwuchekwe Pius, Ogwueleka Francisca Nonyelum, and Tammy Ayres.

2019. “Civil Liberty, Human Rights and Security vs. Counter-Terrorism Measures.” IUP
Journal of International Relations 13 (4): 26–27. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=poh&AN=139925819&site=eds-live&scope=site