portfolio introduction- Sara Ach

The first paper I selected is a text-based research paper, the first essay that was assigned in my writing class this spring quarter. The assignment was to find an issue in Colorado or Denver, preferably by looking through recent newspaper articles, research that topic, and write an analytic research paper with the information found from conducting research on that subject. I found an article in the Denver Post about the juvenile justice system, concerning a debate that surfaced regarding the modification of a bill that was passed in 2006. The bill that was passed in 2006 stated that all juveniles sentenced to life in prison were eligible for parole after a certain period of time, and the current debate was regarding a new bill that, if passed, would extend the 2006 bill to all juveniles, not just ones sentenced after 2006. I intended for this essay to show the history of the juvenile justice system in Colorado, and demonstrate why it is wrong and should be changed. To show why it should be changed, I provided information and then analyzed it, showing the reader to costs and benefits of the Colorado juvenile justice system and describing how different laws do no benefit Colorado, but changing them would.
I began this assignment by researching and finding a topic that was of interest to me. Law and the justice system is intruiging to me, so when I came across the article in the Denver Post, I had found my topic. I struggled, though, in researching the Colorado juvenile justice system, and could not find many useful sources. I then knew that I had to expand my topic, so I began researching the juvenile justice system in general, and revised the make-up of my essay to coinside.
-process of writing
-what I did, where I struggled, how I fixed it, and peer revision
-what this paper demonstrates about my writing
-good
-bad that needs improvement, how I changed that through the revisions