In this Unit you are required to provide a brief statement about topics that you wanted to further explore in the area of computer applications in the field of criminal justice. You also located current scholarly studies related to the future areas you wanted to explore.

For this part of the project, you are required to prepare a detailed outline of your proposed exploration of the topic identified. You will outline, point by point, the main ideas or contributions that this new technology will make to the field. For each point, include the scholarly material that will be used to support the content of your paper. The outline must include the following:

1. a project topic (related to computer applications for criminal justice),

2. a thesis statement,

3. a brief introduction to the topic, and

4. at least three specific points that will be discussed on the chosen topic.

a) Within each main point, there must be two or more specific sub-topics that will be discussed and include a citation for the materials from which that information will come.

b) This assignment will also require an annotated bibliography with references that are in APA format for each of the scholarly sources that you have identified.

Each annotation should be a summary of the study that includes the sample, the method, the findings, and a brief statement about how you see it contributing to your thesis. The annotated bibliography is a transitional step in writing a research-style paper and is not included in the final submission (Unit VIII); however, the sources will appear in the reference section.

c) The annotated bibliography must contain a minimum of 12 sources. Eight of those sources must be from scholarly and peer-reviewed works (journals or law reviews only). The other four sources may come from professional journals (e.g., reports from the Bureau of Justice Statistics [BJS], governmental databases, or those sources found through the use of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service [NCJRS] but not newsletters, bulletins or other non-peer-reviewed sources).

The journal articles and studies should be no older than seven years from publication date, and the four professional journals can be no older than five years from publication.

If you have a source that cannot be attributed to an author, governmental body, or a publication that meets the description of "scholarly" given here, you should not use it, and it will not count against the required number of sources. Students may exceed the minimum number of required sources as long as the criteria for "credible" and "scholarly" are met.

This assignment should be five double-spaced pages in length (not counting title page, reference page).