Harrison Jill PhD - Professional Writing for the Criminal Justice System

i Professional Writing for the
Criminal Justice System

ii Jill Harrison, PhD, is an associate professor of sociology, Rhode Island College, and the director of the Justice Studies Program, which offers BA and MA programs to over 400 students. She has worked within the Rhode Island prison system since 2006 and is a court-appointed special advocate for children in state care. She has excellent working relationships with a variety of state agencies, including the correctional staff and administration, and has served as a consultant, instructor, and researcher with the RI Department of Corrections. In addition, she has provided training in cross-cultural communication for medical and social work staff who work with special populations throughout New England. Her current research is focused on the relationship between childhood trauma, drug use, and adult incarceration.

Daniel Weisman, MSW, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Social Work, Rhode Island College, and former chair, Bachelor of Social Work Department. He directed Rhode Island Colleges Applied Research and Training Project, and evaluated programs for several Rhode Island state departments, as well as private nonprofit agencies in numerous states. He was a certified site visitor for the Council on Social Work Education. He has coauthored three other books, including Professional Writing for Social Work Practice (2013); written chapters in several anthologies; and published articles in social work and labor studies journals.

Joseph Zornado, PhD, is a professor of English at Rhode Island College. He has written numerous articles and books on literature, culture, and film, as well as on the teaching of writing. His first scholarly monograph, Inventing the Child: Culture, Ideology, and the Story of Childhood, appeared in 2001 (Routledge). He recently completed a speculative trilogy, 2050: A Future History in three volumes (Merry Blacksmith Press, 2015). He has coauthored Professional Writing for Social Work Practice (Springer, 2013), and is currently completing a scholarly monograph, Disney and the Dialectic of Desire: Fantasy as Social Practice (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016). He teaches American literature, childrens literature, literary theory, literature and film, and speculative fiction, among other courses.

Jill Harrison, PhD, Daniel Weisman, MSW, PhD,
and Joseph Zornado, PhD

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Harrison, Jill, 1963- author. | Weisman, Daniel, author. | Zornado, Joseph L., author.

Title: Professional writing for the criminal justice system / Jill Harrison, PhD, Daniel Weisman, PhD, and Joseph Zornado, PhD.

Description: New York, NY : Springer Publishing Company, [2017]

Identifiers: LCCN 2017002726 | ISBN 9780826194480 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Criminal justice, Administration ofAuthorship. | CriminologyAuthorship.

Classification: LCC HV7419.5 .H37 2017 | DDC 808.06/6364dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002726

Printed in the United States of America by McNaughton & Gunn.

v This book is dedicated to our families, Cameron, Lori, Vivian,
Emily, Clara, Jack, Merith, Debbie, Ann, and Millard,
and to all our students who inspired this book.

vi vii Contents

Contents

viii ix Preface

Why do you need to learn to write more effectively? Do you, after all? What does writing have to do with criminal justice or any of the justice professions and practices that make it up, such as policing, or corrections, or courts? This book is an answer to this question, a set of answers really, with key ideas, plenty of examples, and lots of practice built in. Our work in the first three chapters begins with a review of some of the challenges that arise every day in justice-related work in terms of thought and perception. present a series of exercises designed to help you develop a simple but effective writing process. Without an effective writing process, writing becomes a stressful, often rushed chore that produces a product that is often inferior, unaccepted by a supervisor, or even inadmissible in court. But practice makes perfect. Our work will guide you through a full range of practice settings drawn from actual professionals currently working in the field of criminal justice. We conclude the book with a chapter on fundamentals of effective writing and a robust writing glossary that will help you to edit and correct your work in the final stage.

Imagine these scenarios:

You are a law enforcement officer. During a traffic stop, you smell a suspicious substance in the vehicle. You obtain verbal permission to search the vehicle and find what looks like a crack pipe and a small bag of an unknown substance tucked above the passengers visor. Once arrested, the suspect denies giving you permission to search the vehicle. Soon after this event you will have to produce a written report that, perhaps months later, you will use to prepare yourself for court and a defense attorneys cross-examination of what you say happened during that traffic stop.

You are a corrections officer in a prison. One evening you intervene in an altercation between two inmates. In order to break up the dispute, you use moderate force with one of the participants, which includes forcing an inmate down to the floor and cuffing him. Later, the inmate claims that you used unnecessary and undue force in a nonemergency situation. Your supervisor requests a written report of the event but it happened 2 weeks ago. What do you remember? Will your report be supported by the video that is in the wardens possession? Will your report describe what another officer on the scene witnessed?