Policy Discussion Paper #1

Recently representatives from the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) made a request to the Bigton (Texas) City Council to participate in the 287(g) program (

). Briefly, the 287(g) Program allows local law enforcement agencies to enforce certain aspects of federal U.S. immigration law, expanding a departments authority to:

• Identify and process removable aliens with pending or active criminal charges.
• Enforce limited immigration authorities with ICE oversight during routine duties.
• Serve and execute administrative warrants on removable aliens in your jail.

Bigton (not actually a real town) is a small town (population 5,000) in a rural area of Texas. The most prominent industry in the county is agriculture. The residential population is 60% White, 30% Hispanic, 8% Black, and 2% Other/More than one race. During harvest season the number of Hispanic residents increases substantially. Most of these individuals are seasonal agricultural workers that return to Mexico after the harvest. The crime rate in Bigton is very low. Historically, it does not change even with the added presence of foreign nationals during harvest.

You are a patrol lieutenant with the Bigton Police Department and attended the DHS presentation to the City Council. Subsequently, the Chief of Police, Mayor, City Manager, and City Attorney have scheduled a meeting with the department’s command staff (including you) to discuss the feasibility of Bigton participating in this program.

Your task (assigned by the Chief) is to prepare a Policy Discussion Paper for this meeting. This paper is intended to include information relating to the City of Bigton’s possible participation in the 287(g) program. Your task is to provide objective information and not to make a specific recommendation. Specifically your discussion document should contain the following content.

1. A brief summary of the 287(g) program overall and its three program participation options (Jail, Task Force, Warrant Officer). NOTE: The City of Bigton does not operate a jail.
2. A detailed list of what participation in the 287(g) program would require of the Bigton Police Department (resource allocation, changes in current procedures, training, internal costs, financial incentives, public image of the department, etc.). NOTE: Use the independent sources, particularly from other agency’s internal evaluations, to identify the possible issues that may arise from participation.
3. A detailed discussion on the anticipated advantages of participation for the City of Bigton. NOTE: Don’t rely on your own experience to identify the anticipated advantages. Use information from the independent sources.
4. A detailed discussion on the anticipated disadvantages of participation for the City of Bigton. NOTE: Don’t rely on your own experience to identify the anticipated disadvantages. Use information from the independent sources.

Manuscript requirements

• Length: 1,500 to 2,000 words, not including the bibliography.
• Section and subsection headings must be used.
• Summary
• Participation requirements (likely there will be subsection headings in this section e.g. resource allocation, changes in current procedures, training, internal costs, financial incentives, public image of the department, etc.)
• Advantages of participation
• Disadvantages of participation
• Cohesively written paragraphs, meaning that every sentence within a single paragraph must be relevant to the message or issue discussed in the paragraph.
• May be written in outline form but each point must contain enough information to inform the policy discussion.
• This issue is controversial. However, avoid, at all costs, the temptation to offer political, social or editorial comments. You are not making a recommendation here. The purpose of this paper is to provide objective information to the policy decision making process.
• No fewer than five independent sources must be used. These sources can be from the academic literature, government reports, evaluations of program participation from other local agencies, or any other authoritative source. Editorial, opinion, political, or advocacy group sources must not be used.
• Information from the sources used must be cited textually.
• Information from the sources used also must be listed in a bibliography at the end of the manuscript.
• Use the citation format from the American Psychological Association (APA).
• Free of obvious spelling and grammatical errors.
• Font: No smaller than 12 font.
• One inch margins for edges, top and bottom.
• No cover page.

From the syllabus

Submitting Written Assignments

There are two types of written assignments during the course the Weekly Short Essays and the Policy Discussion Papers. All of these assignments must be submitted through their assignment pages on Canvas in written form so that they are evaluated through TurnItIn. This normally requires that submissions be pasted into the dialogue box provided in the assignment page. Submissions with hyperlinks to files containing them will not be accepted. Submissions that are submitted as hyperlinks without being evaluated through TurnItIn will not be graded. Such submissions will be returned with a zero grade and an opportunity to resubmit as described above within one week of their original due dates. If not resubmitted within this time frame the student will receive a zero grade for that submission. This opportunity resubmit an assignment cannot be extended to the final Policy Discussion Paper (#2)

A Special Note on Plagiarism

Throughout this semester you will be asked to;

• Write short essays answering questions using the materials from the required textbook, and
• Write two longer policy discussion papers on a contemporary controversy within American police systems and practices.

While some degree of collaboration among students is expected, and even encouraged, it is essential to avoid using another persons work (published or not) without adequate attribution. In other words, using quotations, concepts, definitions, similar passages, research findings, etc. from other researchers without properly indicating (both in text and in a bibliography) the source of this information is plagiarism and a serious violation of University policy. Violations of this policy will, depending on the level of seriousness, result in a grade reduction (including a grade of 0) and/or the referral of the student for discipline (including expulsion from the University). Here are some examples.

• The Weekly Short Essay assignments are intended to evaluate the students understanding of a specific practice relevant to American policing or practice. Merely quoting passages from the textbook is insufficient. Quoting passages from the textbook without attributing them to the textbook is plagiarism.
• In the Policy Discussion Papers the students will conduct a review of the available literature or information relating a policy level decision. These papers will contain objective information from multiple perspectives on a contemporary topic in American policing. They are intended to simulate the sort of documents that are used during the policy development process. The sources used in these papers must be attributed to their authors. The use of these materials without attribution is considered plagiarism.
• Using any material from a website or another student that has previously been submitted for credit (at any university) without attribution (i.e. presenting it as your own intellectual creation) is plagiarism.