research paper

In 2020, I receive an email informing me that unbeknownst to me or my family, my father’s Scottish family is secretly British royalty and my mother’s Spanish family is secretly Spanish royalty, and that when they married, it made me the err to an unclaimed island off the Mediterranean coast. After confirming this isn’t a scam to steal my bank account routing numbers, I claim my royal inheritance and move with my wife to the island, where we use the wealth we’ve been entrusted with to begin creating a small country. Because of my mixed ancestry, my island is, incredibly, completely separate from either Scotland or Spain, and thus I am free to create all of my own rules and regulations.

As I begin designing my governmental policies, I reach out to you because I need help with coming up with some good drug policies. My goal is to get as many recommendations as possible and choose the best among them. You are tasked with one thing and one thing only: find the one drug policy or program that you like best, and pitch me on why I should adopt it. This can be a broad, systemic policy (for example, legalization, zero tolerance) or it can be a more narrow, focused policy (for example, mandatory minimum drug sentences, drug courts, community policing that deals specifically with drug offenders). You’re not designing my whole approach to drug crime, just one aspect of it, so your policy does not need to be a comprehensive approach to drug crime; in fact, it is hard to imagine any one policy, no matter how grandiose, that on its own could address all issues related to drug crime. Instead, you’re pitching me on something that you think should be one among many components of my approach to drug crime because you think it is effective, has minimal or no negative side effects, and is a morally sound approach. This policy can be a policy we covered in class, or a new one; if it is one we covered in class, though, you must do additional research on it.

A good paper should have three sections. First, describe the policy to me. In this description, let me know in some detail how it would work. Second, tell me why you think it is good. You can and should defend the policy from multiple angles, including: does it align with theories of drug offending; does it align with what we know about the connection between drugs and more serious crime; does it align with what we know about drugs themselves; has it been tried elsewhere, and if so, how has it worked; does it avoid negative side effects or unintended consequences; does it compare well against other common policies; and do you find it morally appealing, and why? Third, and finally, tell me why I shouldn’t worry about the issues with this policy. You know that I have a criminal justice education, and so you don’t want to hide your policy’s weaknesses from me, because I may already know about them. Instead, you should be honest about these weaknesses, but also let me know why they may not be as much of a problem as they seem at first glance.

The paper should be 4-6 pages, with approximately 1.5-2 pages per section, all double-spaced, in size 12 Times New Roman font. You should have at least five sources of information, but I recommend having closer to ten. If you are recommending a policy that we discussed in class, you may use the class lectures, textbooks, and additional material in your paper, but they cannot count as one of your five sources (meaning, you need an additional five sources on top of class material). Please cite material from class (e.g., your textbook) as well as additional research material.  

The Policy i have selected is  The policy program I will be discussing is minimum sentenceing & legalization