Analysis of Two Criminal Justice Articles
The two articles chosen for this analysis represent two new ways of looking at a subject that seems resistant to change -- the criminal justice system. Flanagan (2000), argues in the Journal of Criminal Justice Education, in an article entitled "Liberal education and the criminal justice major," that new perspectives are needed on the part of both faculty and students, in order to achieve an academic environment where the major electives and extra-classroom experiences in the current Criminal Justice curricula become more skewed toward the goal of "integrated learning," so that it becomes a major part, in fact, the keystone, of a revised architecture of liberal education.
Nunn (1995), in a challenging article called "The trial as text: Allegory, myth and symbol in the adversarial criminal process - a critique of the role of the public defender and a proposal for reform," in the American Criminal Law Review, also argues for change, a change in the way we view the myth of the criminal justice system. Nunn provides ample evidence for his nimble reasoning, and concludes by calling for the creation of a new Cabinet post, the position of Federal Defender General should be created to enhance the public image of public defenders.
The intrinsic connection between these two articles is that the changes Nunn calls for are evolutionary, and must be developed by the educational process, the exact same process that Flanagan is challenging. In the paper that follows, the following organization will be found: A) Reconstruction; B) Critical Analysis (including Logical Development, Documentation and Presentation); and, C) Conclusion.
Nunn begins his very long argument with a vivid recreation of a TV scene that has become a part of our popular culture, that of a young black man being arrested and brought to trial "as two burly police officers grip him tightly by the arms, he tries to hide his fa...