Week 9 - Research Paper Blues
This is the first week after spring break. Wow it was way too short and I had way too much fun. But anyway, time to get back to the serious business of school. Yea right. Emily and I had lunch at Hooters downtown this Thursday, but did not tutor. Chris called me last week and said that their schedule would be different because of testing for week 10, and that the school has spring break during week 11. These weeks come from my blog titles so there isn't any confusion.
Coming back to school meant a trip to the library for me to find material for my research paper. My orignial topic dealt with Somali immigrants, but I wasn't able to find very much valuable information about them, save census numbers (or boring statistics). All of my searches kept coming back to juvenile crime so I decided to take on a subject that I had been interested in for quite some time.
Zero tolerance policies have always been interesting to me, and they seem to only become more popular. I decided to right my paper about whether or not they work, or do their ends justify their means? I also took the paper one step further and examine zero tolerance in the adult justice system. For this part, I chose to focus on California's three strikes law, a perfect example of getting tough on adults. I found that these zero tolerance policies do not work effectively, and moreover, the ones sufferering the most from them end up being minorities. More on the research paper next time.