Howdy all, I hope you are doing well and gearing up for the last days and weeks of this class! Today's episode is all about criminal justice, or as I like to think of it the system of order we have for inside our borders. When it comes to criminal justice, we have lots of problems (hate crimes, recidivism, etc.) but we also have some fundamental misunderstandings (particularly about crime rates). In this episode we'll start by reviewing data on different criminal justice problems as well as how we know what we know (with sources like the UCR and NCVS). This episode will also walk through different punishment philosophies and an incredibly brief overview of the system, to provide more background to you. Our big finale this week is thinking about how we can explain the policy of the War on Drugs using our decision-making models from early in the course. Questions? Let me know and I'll get back to you ASAP!