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The topic of immigrants and crime. If communities with high rates of immigrants have higher rates of crime (and increases/decreases in immigrants are associated with increases/decreases in crime), then indirectly, you could use the conclusion of this research to argue for or against better border security.
Here are three articles that you should start with for your research:
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-criminol-032317-092026
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1525/ctx.2008.7.1.28
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2014704117
Requirements and Overview of the Research Paper
Your capstone research paper will be written as a policy report. It must be between 4,000 words and 5,000 words in length (and this includes the title page and the reference pages). Your research paper/policy report needs to be double-spaced with 1.0-inch margins and using a 12-point Times New Roman font. Your policy report must be based entirely on published research (and not your opinion or non-scholarly opinions). You should have at least 15, but likely more
For this project, you will examine policies through a critical, social-scientific, empirical lens and produce an action-oriented policy report targeting policymakers and agency executives (e.g., chiefs of police). It will inform policymakers and agency executives on what they can do to improve what scholars and many people in communities of color call the ‘criminal injustice system.’ Thus, your policy report will include several in-text citations referencing journal articles, books, book chapters, and reports from reputable agencies such as the Vera Institute, the Prison Policy Initiative, the Sentencing Project, and government agencies like the Department of Justice.
To illustrate how you might proceed: Existing drug policy still adheres to the tenets of the “war on drugs” and, as such, is more oriented toward enforcement than toward prevention and treatment. Enforcement-based strategies are, by themselves, limited in their overall effectiveness. Drug courts have become significant players in the fight against drugs, but enforcement remains the focal point of policy efforts. Racial disparities in prison populations have been attributed to the war on drugs and accompanying determinant sentencing structures. Yet, policymakers have been reluctant to alter sentencing schemes or legislation that flatly prohibits drug sale, possession, and use. If this were your focus (or topic of investigation), you would review the evidence about the effectiveness of enforcement-based and treatment-based efforts and the relative cost-effectiveness of each and recommend to a policymaking audience what strategies, practices, and programs should be adopted. As a final note, you need to view “effectiveness” broadly, including issues of justice, fairness, and what are known as “collateral consequences,” not just in terms of reducing or preventing crime.
The Structural Elements of the Capstone Policy Report
Policy reports directly reflect the policy analyst’s roles, i.e., from researcher to advocate. The type of report you are writing is the more action-oriented advocacy end of the continuum (nevertheless, based purely on evidence and not your opinion). Although there is variation even at this end of the scale, the most common elements of a policy report are as follows:
• (Title Page)
• Executive Summary
• Context and the Importance of the Problem
• Pre-Exiting Policies, Policy Alternatives, and Research
• Conclusion
• Policy Recommendations
• References
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