Prior to beginning work on this assignment, reflect upon your journey here at Ashford University. Think about your entrance into our school, your previous educational and professional experiences, and review how your knowledge and opinions of social and criminal justice have changed over time. Refer back to your own notes, classwork, and feedback from professors to be ready to evaluate your program of study and share your ideas with classmates and your instructor for this class. The focus of the Capstone Paper is to propose a resolution to a contemporary social and criminal justice issue through the application of information from a variety of related fields, which may include sociology, law, psychology, and ethics. A good place to look for topic ideas is in your previous coursework, including coursework uploaded into your portfolio on Portfolium. Specifically, you may find topic ideas from issues you became aware of in courses such as CRJ301: Juvenile Justice, CRJ303: Corrections, CRJ306: Criminal Law and Procedure, and CRJ308: Psychology of Criminal Behavior. You may find your topic anywhere; however, your undergraduate coursework is an excellent resource to help you generate ideas.

In developing a proposed solution to a modern social and criminal justice issue, you are encouraged to use the Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table to identify and devise a workable plan. A good way to approach this paper is to consider it a detailed and thorough scholarly piece on a single, yet important, social and criminal justice issue. That is, by the end of the paper, you will be an expert on what the current research says about your chosen topic.

In your paper,

• Create a clear thesis statement that identifies your social and criminal justice issue.
• Summarize your chosen social and criminal justice issue in approximately one to two pages.
  • Describe what makes this an issue.
  • Provide data to show how this issue has made an impact on society.
  • Explain which social justice principles need to be addressed and why.
  • Detail the cultural and diversity issues present in your chosen social and criminal justice problem.
  • Describe how addressing your chosen issue contributes to the goal of a more just society.
• Analyze the empirical research on your chosen topic.
  • You may use your Week 1 Annotated Bibliography to complete this section of the paper. Please ensure that the instructor feedback is incorporated within this section. Incorporating peer feedback is optional.
• Propose a possible resolution to your chosen social and criminal justice issue.
  • Evaluate which branches of the criminal justice system are impacted/involved and how they either help or hinder the issue.
  • Analyze how the criminal and social justice theories (in relation to the United States Constitution) and landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions impact your chosen issue and support your resolution.
  • Examine how the judiciary, corrections, and law enforcement systems address social equality, solidarity, human rights, and overall fairness for all and how these essential concepts impact your issue and resolution.
  • Evaluate how poverty, racism, religion and other sociocultural variables may apply to contemporary social and criminal justice by drawing information among the fields of, but not limited to, criminology, law, philosophy, psychology, science, and sociology.

The Solution Proposal Capstone Paper

• Must be 15 double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s APA Style (Links to an external site.)
• Must include a separate title page with the following:
  • Title of paper
  • Student’s name
  • Course name and number
  • Instructor’s name
  • Date submitted

For further assistance with the formatting and the title page, refer to APA Formatting for Word 2013 (Links to an external site.).

• Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
• Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
  • For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) as well as Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Ashford Writing Center resources.
• Must use at least 10 scholarly and/or credible sources, at least four of which must be found in the Ashford Library, in addition to the course text. You may consider referencing documentaries, contemporary news reports, multimedia, and interviews with professionals in the field. Cite your sources within the text of your paper and on the reference page.
  • The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
• Must document any information used from sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.)
• Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. See the Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Ashford Writing Center for specifications.

Carefully review the Grading Rubric (Links to an external site.) for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.