Tired of “Reeding” Bad Papers? Teaching Research and Writing Skills to Criminal Justice Students*.

One of the most common complaints among criminal justice educators is that students have very poor writing and research skills. In particular, educators cite that students’ papers are poorly organized, are replete with grammar and spelling errors, are missing key elements in their discussions, and are often plagiarized. Despite the need for research and writing classes, very few social science faculty members teach writing-intensive courses because of the amount of time such a course requires. Accordingly, this paper presents a model criminal justice writing class that outlines specific teaching methods to overcome the most common problems found in criminal justice writing and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]