Term Paper Guidelines PAPER LENGTH: 5 pages (not including reference list or title page) PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to explain a crime trend or statistics from the Uniform Crime Reports (“Crime in the United States 2017”) by applying a criminological theory to explain its occurrence. Do not use the 2018 (preliminary) data. Your task is to demonstrate that you can look up and interpret statistics from the Uniform Crime Reports and to demonstrate that you understand a criminological theory well enough to apply it to the crime on which you chose to focus. PAPER LAYOUT: I. Introduction of Topic (~ 1/2 page) A. Write a paragraph introducing the crime you chose to focus on in your paper. Be sure to state the UCR definition of the crime and write a statement about why it is important to study this crime. B. State the purpose and structure (i.e. organization) of your paper. Do this with no more than four sentences. Use phrases like “In this paper, I argue…”, “The purpose of this paper is to….” Or some similar phrase when stating the purpose of your paper. Your purpose should identify the theory you will be using. Be sure to state your purpose somewhere in the first or second paragraph of the introduction. II. Crime trend or statistics/Discussion/Application of theory
A. Go to the FBI UCR website and gather all available statistics on the crime. Describe the national crime trend you are addressing. For example, what is the frequency of this crime, who is the typical perpetrator, which weapon(s) are typically used if any, etc. Give statistics from at least three tables preferably more. Be sure to reference from which UCR table you are getting your data. Do not insert tables, graphs, or charts in the 5 pages of text. You can include them in an appendix but not in the body of the paper. Be sure to cite the official or academic reference for the Uniform Crime Reports. Your statistics must be at the national level. Do not focus on states, counties, cities, or any other level of analysis. (~1.5 pages) B. Choose a criminological theory that was discussed in the lectures or assigned readings (do not use the book chapters that were not assigned). Make sure you choose ONE theory and that it
is a specific theory. Choosing a school of thought or classification of theories will not give you enough detail to apply the theory to the crime. For example, “structural theory”, “conflict theory”, “subcultural theory” are classes of theories or schools of thought. Choose a theory within the class in which you are interested. For example, labeling theory is a conflict theory. Once you have choses a theory, explain or describe it the criminological theory you will use to explain the crime. You must use academic references in this explanation or description. Your sources for this discussion should be two academic references. References to the text book or class lectures will not count toward this requirement and such references should be very brief. Do not use magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, or non-academic websites as your references. Dictionaries and encyclopedias are not to be used as references since many are not peer-reviewed. Class lectures from any course from any university do not count as academic references. If you are using material from a lecture, go to the source of the lecture material if available. Do not use wikis of any type. Do not use websites with addresses that end in “.com”. Websites with a “.org” address should be government sites only. Be careful with using material from websites with a “.edu” address – most of the material on these sites is lecture or class exercise activities. These are not academic. You should use the online journal and databases available through the TTU Library homepage or use hardcopy journals or books. (~1 page) C. Using the detail from the theory explained in part B above, apply the theory to the crime you described in part A above. In other words, how does this theory explain the crime you have described? (~ 1.5 pages) III. Conclusions (~1/2 page) A. Summarize the crime trend and restate the main theoretical idea(s) and how they explain the crime.
PAPER FORMAT: 1. Use current American Sociological Association format. The ASA literary guidelines are available on Blackboard. You do not need to write an abstract or biography. 2. The paper should have a title that tells the reader the crime and theory you are using. 3. Use a size 12 font, Times News Roman, and a 1″ margin for all sides. Be sure to enumerate the pages.
4. Double-space the text. 5. Do not plagiarize. Almost all of the paper should consist of complete sentences constructed in your own words. Use quotation marks for copied text. Copied text or sentences should be approximately one-fifth or less of the paper and scattered throughout the paper. GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR WRITING YOUR PAPER: 1. The terms “violent crime”, “victimless crime”, “juvenile delinquency” are not crimes. They are classifications of crimes. Do not write a paper with these terms as the “crime” on which you are focusing. Write about a specific crime. For example, if you to write about violent crime, you must choose a specific crime such as aggravated assault, murder, rape, etc. If you want to write about juvenile offending, you would choose one of the crimes that the UCR gives statistics by age groups. Then choose a crime by the age group. 2. The paper is to be an academic paper, not a personal account, diary, or editorial -- do not tell personal stories or use the paper to state your beliefs about why crime occurs or what society should do to criminals. 3. Do not plagiarize. All sentences should be written in your own words. A five page paper does not allow much room for quotes, so avoid using them. 4. Avoid using phrases like “I feel” “I believe” -- A feeling is not a thought and it is obvious the writing is what you think because it is your writing. 5. All writing should be relevant to the purpose of the paper. Examine your paper paragraph by paragraph and determine how each paragraph fits your purpose. 6. Use subheadings to organize your paper. 7. Do not spend a lot of space in the introduction writing about searching for a topic. 8. You must cite each reference in the text in order to receive credit for that reference and in-text citations must be listed in the reference list. 9. A factual statement or claim must have a citation. 10. Avoid using words like “these”, “this”, “that” in the first sentence of a paragraph without explicitly stating the point or idea to which you are referring. 11. Since this is to be a sole authored paper, there should be no references to “we” in the paper. 12. Avoid introducing new material or information in the conclusion section. 13. Do not use the majority of the five pages writing about information from your textbook. You will not get credit for that writing. 14. The majority of writing should come from the non-course materials. Too much reliance on the course text book or assigned readings will result in a loss of points.
15. Use statistics from the FBI UCR website. Go directly to the source. Do not site FBI UCR statistics from other websites. WEBSITE CITATIONS: In-text citation: The material from the website must be academic. Academic material will have an author or research institute listed as the source of information. Course websites and lectures posted on the web are not academic material. Do not use any website that has the “.edu” or “.com” tag. In-text citations should follow one of these formats: (Fox and Zawitz 2012) OR (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2014) when no author is listed but the reference is a government or foundation document. Reference list citation: Fox, James A. and Marianne W. Zawitz (2012). Homicide Trends in the United States. Bureau of Justice Statistics. www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs Bureau of Justice Statistics (2014). Uniform Crime Reports. www.fbi.gov/ucr
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