• Sources: Your paper MUST use 20 peer-reviewed sociological or criminological articles. You may use an additional article or two from another discipline, organization, or government. If you write your paper from the perspective of psychology instead of sociology/criminology, then you will have points deducted. To find peer-reviewed sources you need to be using the school’s library website. What I would do is do a search and skim through the articles, finding the ones most relevant/best ones. You’ll want to narrow down to the United States, and in the last 20-30 years. You do not want research, which is too old. Crime has changed significantly since the 90s! Download them and begin reading them fully, taking notes on each article. Focus on the main argument, research methods, and findings. Write a list of arguments or subthemes you want to focus on, then rearrange them so they make sense. The point is not to just summarize these articles, you need to synthesize them. Then create an outline for your final paper. In your final paper you’ll want to fill in these subtopic/subthemes with the current literature and adding transition sentences. Once this is done, then you should write your introduction, with a thesis statement, and conclusion.
• Citations: Many of you cited incorrectly. There is a specific format to cite within your text, as well as the references page. Use the ASA or APA guide on Purdue Owl’s website.
I have attached the rough draft/bib which was our first assignment and need 10 sources added to the final paper. I also have attached the final paper example from the teacher.
A note from teacher on rough draft/bib attached:
Good job overall – you do need to find soc/crim journal articles for your sources. You have to have 20 for your final paper. You need to work on the organization of it, with a clear intro and conclusion. YOu also need to parse out the definition of death row (the cell) vs death penalty (the execution).