Capstone Paper 1 The first paper is about the scope of the problem and issues yo

Capstone Paper 1
The first paper is about the scope of the problem and issues your policy or
program is trying to address, as well as the history of your policy or program
and its goals. Think of the first paper as offering all of the background material
your reader will need before being able to assess the evidence as to whether or
not your policy or program is working.
For example, if you were writing about drug courts, you would begin by
covering our nation’s history with illegal drug use. How big of a problem are
illegal drugs? What are the outcomes of illegal drug use for users? How has
the CJ system attempted to deal with illegal drugs, and when and why did drug
court emerge? The answers to these questions would be essential for the
reader to know, and would transition nicely to the next question for paper two,
which is: do drug courts work as intended?
A second example: if you were writing about police use of nonlethal force, you
would begin by covering what we know about how often police use force, what
percentage of that force is nonlethal, what forms that force typically takes, and
what guidance officers have historically received in using force. Then you
could discuss what more modern forms of use of force policies look like, thus
demonstrating how police use of force policy has changed over the years. This
would transition nicely to the next question for paper two, which is: does police
use of force policy impact officer behavior?
Be careful to also to note gaps in our knowledge or places where the
information does not rest on firm ground. If there is an important background
question that is unanswered, or has been only marginally explored, that’s worth
noting. This might happen if the program or policy is relatively new. There also
may be a lack of information on the scope of the problem, and that’s worth
noting too. For example, there is not a national database on the shooting of
US citizens by police. For that kind of info, we have to rely on individual news
accounts or compilations of shooting in certain places (e.g., cities) by scholars
or journalists, so that’s worth discussing in the first paper.
Be sure to also discuss what the advantages or goals the advocates had for the
policy at the outset. This will allow you to nicely transition into the second
paper about whether or not the policy works as intended and whether it
achieves its stated goals. Please be sure to leave out any evaluations or
discussion of how the policy works, as that’s going to be the entirety of
paper 2.
In terms of expectations, the first paper should be about 4-6 pages using
traditional font size and margins in MS Word. You can have an intro and
conclusion for the paper, but understand that you’ll likely edit this later when
you merge the paper assignments together. It would probably be best to end
the first paper with some kind of transition to the second, which will address
whether or not the policy/program works as intended.
Resources
APA Style Guide, In-Text Citations: use this to guide how you cite your sources
in-text
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting
_and_style_guide/in_text_citations_author_authors.html
APA Style Guide. Reference Lists: use this for your bibliography
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting
_and_style_guide/reference_list_author_authors.htm