MSU Billings Global Social Problems and Incarceration Paper

To ensure that you begin to think about your paper early and have ample time to develop it, you will hand in an outline well before the final paper (see the course schedule above). The outline should be one page and must include the topic, the direction of the paper, the theoretical approach that you plan to take to analyze the social problem, and the plan for the basic organizational structure/formatting of the paper. In addition, you must include the references of at least three of the sources that you have identified. The outline is worth 20 points.

You must write a 5 to 7 page, double-spaced paper that investigates a particular social problem that is covered in this course. Your paper must explain/show the severity of the social problem (it’s impact), examine theoretical explanations of the social problem, and examine the ethical dimensions/implications that are connected to the social problem. Any problem selected should have a global or international dimension to it. In some cases, this can be best included by contrasting different countries approaches to the social problem (this works well for issues of healthcare, crime, and forms of inequality) or it may taken on a broader global analysis (this may be appropriate for environment, war and conflict, global inequality etc.) Please incorporate relevant course readings into your paper. Ideally, you will cite both material covered in class, and relevant scholarly papers or books from outside of the course to support your arguments.

You will have considerable freedom to develop your paper but there are certain rules by which your paper must abide:

1. You must include at least 5 bibliographic references. These must be appropriately cited at the end of the paper. All references must include the authors’ or author’s last and first name(s), the year published, the title of the article or book, the name of the journal or publisher, and where it was published. You should cite both research from outside the class along with relevant readings from inside the class. Five bibliographic references are the MINIMUM. Points will be deducted if you do not meet this requirement.

2. To count towards the bibliographic reference requirement, the references must be scholarly. This means they must come from either books of scholars or must be articles published in scholarly journals. If you have questions on this please see me.

3. At least two of the references must be from the class readings. Your references should NOT depend entirely on class readings however. This means that library research is essential.

4. Your work must include in-text citations. All references must be cited in the text and all work cited in the text must be fully referenced in your bibliography or works cited section at the end of the paper. All quotations of authors must be in quotation marks and the in-text citation for quotations must include the page number. All in text citations must include the author’s last name and the year the work was published in parenthesis. For example, (Blum 2004) or (Blum 2004: 328) when quoting.

5. Other criteria of evaluation– I evaluate student papers is according to the depth of analysis, the level and depth of interaction, the correctness and viabilities of the arguments, the level and quality of the evidence that you provide in support of the arguments that you are making, the degree to which you consciously pursue a position of social justice and capture the dimensions of the issues put forth, and the overall quality of the writing (correct spelling, grammar, professional/academic style (avoiding colloquialism and excessive use of the first person).

6. In no circumstances will plagiarism be tolerated. A zero will result in this case. This means that you must not copy the works of either your classmates (this is not a group project) or other scholars and pass it off as your own. Honesty and integrity must be upheld in academic work. Plagiarism includes copying from another students work, having quotations without using quotation marks- even if you cite, copying and pasting work from the internet and trying to change a few words from the original to make it appear as your own.

How do you avoid plagiarism? Avoiding the problem is simple and is achieved by combining two main strategies. The first strategy is to quote with quotation marks and the correct citation including the authors name, year published and page number. For block quotes, the quotation marks are replaced by using a separate indentation style, spacing, and smaller font. The key purpose of quoting is it separates your words from someone else’s. Paraphrasing (putting the concept into your own words and not using quotation marks) and including the correct citation material. These is how you MUST interact with original sources. The rest of the writing in your paper should be your ideas, reflecting on, and interacting with, the cited evidence that you have provided. https://d2l.msutexas.edu/d2l/le/content/65563/view…

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