Transnational Crime, Justice & Security

Optional Courses

Crime, Media and Popular Culture

Tutor: Dr Sarah Armstrong
Course Type: Option
Schedule: Semester 2, Tuesday 2-4pm

Course Description:

Crime and punishment are common if not dominant themes in literature, film, the news, on TV as well as in video games and on the internet. In this course we will be concerned with the dynamics and implications of these various media representations.

There are two distinctive emphases in this course. First, we will tend to focus more on media representations of punishment (prisons, prisoners and the criminal justice system) than on crime. Second, we will consider the transformative and normative potential of media as a tool of reform and influencing policy. Hence, this course follows a different line than quite a lot of the research in crime and media studies in that we will learn about but not dwell on how the media depicts and frames debate about crime and its agents (for example, devoting more coverage to low incidence crimes like serial killing rather than high incidence crimes like burglary). Instead, we take as our point of departure an acceptance of media representations as influential of popular and political discourses around crime, but we will be particularly interested in representations of the responses to crime and disorder: the criminal justice system and the actors it creates. Moreover, we will not be satisfied to diagnose the problematic aspects of media representations of criminal justice, but seek also to understand how and if these can also work to advance social justice.

Course Reading:

• Yvonne Jewkes (2004), Media and Crime, London: Sage
• Mariana Valverde (2006), Law and Order: Images, Meaning, Myths, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge-Cavendish

Punishment and Penology

Tutor: Professor Fergus McNeill

Course Type: Option
Schedule: Semester 1, Friday 9-11am

Course Description:

Questions of how and why we should punish offenders – and whether we should punish them at all – date back to antiquity and are central to contemporary criminology, as well as being features of often heated public debate.  This module will explore the meanings of punishment, the ways it has been addresses by major social theorists and the many practical forms it takes in the modern world.

Course Reading:

• Cavadino M  and Dignan  J (2007) The Penal System 4th edition. London : Sage. New edition of an established,  indispensable text – albeit mostly focussed on England and Wales -  theoretically grounded but  with a strong policy-analysis  orientation
• Coyle A (2005) Understanding Prisons and  Punishment. Buckingham: Open University Press.  A very thorough overview of key penological issues
• Daems T (2008) Making Sense of Penal Change:  Oxford: Clarendon Press
• Garland D (1990) Punishment and Modern Society: Oxford:  Clarendon Press
• Garland D (2000) The Culture of Control:  Oxford:  Clarendon Press
• Armstrong S and McCara L (eds) (2006)  Perspectives on Punishment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. state of the art writing on punishment, deriving from “the power to  punish – 20 years on” conference in 2005
• Matthews R (2009) Doing Time: London: Palgrave  (2nd Ed), a more sociological and more intellectually searching introduction to  penology than Cavadino and  Dignan, but complimentary rather than superior to it. 
• Piacentini L (2004) Surviving Russian  Prisons: punishment, politics and economy in transition. Cullompton:Willan   
• Franko Aas K (2004) Sentencing  in The Age of Information.  London: Glasshouse books

Rehabilitation and Desistance from Crime

Tutor: Professor Fergus McNeill
Course Type: Option
Schedule: Semester 2, Tuesday 9-11am

Course Description

One of the world’s most famous sociologists has recently argued that ‘…the question of ‘rehabilitation’ is today prominent less by its contentiousness than by its growing irrelevance’ (Bauman, 2000: p210 in ‘Social Issues of Law and Order’, British Journal of Criminology 40(2): 205–21). Yet despite this sobering if pessimistic assessment, apparently rehabilitative aspirations and apparently rehabilitative practices seem to survive in many jurisdictions. So what exactly is rehabilitation, both as a penal philosophy and as a penal practice? And is it dead or dying, or reviving and being reborn? At the same time, both advocates and critics of rehabilitation have begun to engage seriously with empirical evidence about desistance from crime – about how and why people stop offending. But how can we best assess this evidence, and what does it have to say to ideologies and practices of punishment in general and to debates about the rehabilitation of ‘offenders’ in particular? These are the sorts of questions with which this course seeks to engage.

Course Reading:

• *Farrall, S. and Calverley, A. (2005) Understanding desistance from crime. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
• Laub, J. and Sampson, R. (2003) Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70. Cambridge. Ma., Harvard University Press.
• *McNeill, F., Raynor, P. And Trotter, C. (eds.)(2010) Offender Supervision: New directions in theory, research and practice. Cullompton: Willan (available September 2010).
• McNeill, F. and Whyte, B. (2007) Reducing Reoffending: Social Work and Community Justice in Scotland. Cullompton: Willan.
• Maruna, S. (2001) Making Good: How ex-convicts reform and rebuild their lives.  Washington: American Psychological Association.
• Raynor, P. and Robinson, G. (2005) Rehabilitation, Crime and Justice, Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan.
• *Robinson, G. and Crow, I. (2009) Offender Rehabilitation: Theory, Research and Practice. London: Sage.
• Ward, T. and Maruna, S. (2007) Rehabilitation: Beyond the risk paradigm. London: Routledge.

 Criminal Justice: Global Challenges

Tutor:  Professor Michele Burman & Professor Fergus McNeill

Course Type: Option
Scheduled: Semester 1, Tuesday 3-5pm

Course Description:

The course critically examines normative and theoretical understandings of criminal justice in local and globalised contexts. A key aim is to explore the ways in which criminal justice manifests itself in contexts and cultures of control and punitiveness, techniques of social ordering, and in relation to conceptions of human rights.

Course Reading:

• Aas, K. (2008) Globalisation and Crime London: sage
• Drake, D, Muncie, J., and Westmarland, L. (2010) Criminal Justice: Local and Global Cullompton: Willan 
• Duff, P. and Hutton, N. (1999) Criminal Justice in Scotland Aldershot: Ashgate 
• Findlay, M. (2008) Governing Through  Globalised Crime Cullompton: Willan 
• Hudson, B (1997) Understanding Justice Milton Keynes: Open University Press
• Maguire, M. Morgan, R. and Reiner, R (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (4th edition) Oxford: Oxford University Press
• McConville M and Wilson G (eds) (2000) The Handbook of Criminal Justice Process. Oxford: Oxford University Press
• McEvoy, K. and Mika, H. (2008) Criminology, Human Rights, and Transition from  Conflict: Reconstructing Justice Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 
• Smith, P and Natalier, K (2005) Understanding Criminal Justice: Sociological Perspectives London: Sage
• Stenson, K and Sullivan, R (eds) (2001) Crime, Risk and Justice Cullompton Devon: Willan 

Crime and Community Safety

Tutor: Dr Jon Bannister
Course Type: Option
Schedule: Semester 2, taught over 4 full days

Course Description:

This module is designed to provide students with a broad knowledge of youth crime and anti-social behaviour, their consequences and the endeavour to manage these problems in various urban arenas. Specifically, students will be encouraged to critically analyse the causes of these phenomena and utilise these insights to evaluate national and local strategies designed to combat specific youth behaviours and the public anxieties they are assumed to generate. Overall, the module requires students to investigate the multiple relationships between crime, community and safety.

Course Reading:

• Bannister, J., Pickering, J., Bachelor, S., Burman, M., Kintrea, K., and McVie, S.  2010. Troublesome Youth Groups, Gangs and Knife Carrying in Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.
• Hughes, G. 2007. The Politics of Crime and Community. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Kintrea, K., Bannister, J., Pickering, J., Reid, M., and Suzuki, N. 2008. Young People and Territoriality in British Cities, Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
• Maguire, M., Morgan, R., and Reiner, R. (eds) 2007. The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. 4th Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Millie, A. ed. 2009. Securing Respect: Behavioural Expectations and Anti-Social Behaviour in the UK. Bristol: Policy Press.
• Muncie, J. Youth and Crime. 2009. 3rd Edition. London: Sage.