Module Identifier | CR10120 | ||||||||||||||
Module Title | ELEMENTS OF CRIMINOLOGY | ||||||||||||||
Academic Year | 2007/2008 | ||||||||||||||
Co-ordinator | Miss Katherine S Williams | ||||||||||||||
Semester | Semester 1 | ||||||||||||||
Other staff | Dr Gareth Norris, Professor Alan H Clarke | ||||||||||||||
Course delivery | Lecture | ||||||||||||||
Lecture | 1 x 2 hour lecture and 2x1 hour lecture per week - 30 hours in total | ||||||||||||||
Seminars / Tutorials | 6 hours - 3 x 2 hour seminars | ||||||||||||||
Assessment |
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Professional Exemptions | Not required for Professional Exemption |
DESCRIPTION
The module will introduce students to the major theoretical themes running through criminology and place these within a wider social and political context. It will analyse the continuity in the discipline and the repetition and re-birth of ideas as well as consider the reasons for and the way in which leaps in thinking come into the subject. It will also link these to criminal law and penology to discover whether and how they have been used and, often more interesting, why they have been left to one side by those responsible for policy changes
INTRODUCTION: Major themes
Conceptualising and defining crime and deviance
Theoretical models of crime: individualistic v structural explanations
Determinism v free will
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
The classical tradition in criminology.
The positivist school and the emergence of scientific criminology
Biological bases of criminal behaviour: physical characteristics,
physiological processes and genetic factors.
Psychological explanations: psychoanalytic approaches, learning
theories and cognitive approaches.
Early sociological perspectives: functionalism and strain theories.
Structural explanations: social exclusion, inequality, poverty and
deprivation.
The Chicago School: zonal theory, social disorganization and
differential association.
Culture and subculture
Conflict theory
Social control theory
Social construction of crime: the Labelling Perspective.
Critical and radical perspectives
Feminist criminology
Criminological realism
Cultural criminology
Victimology: towards a victim-centred criminology.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEORY
Context, theory and policy
The relationship between theory and practice
This module is at CQFW Level 4