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Chapter 1 – Understanding Crime and Criminology
- How can ‘crime’ be understood as (a) a legal definition, and (b) a social construction definition?
- In what ways can criminology be considered an ‘interdisciplinary subject’?
- What, does Garland argue, are the two initially separate streams of work, which produced modern criminology?
Chapter 2 – Crime and Punishment in History
Introduction
- Why is history important to our understanding of criminal justice?
- What are the main differences in approach in ‘traditional’ and ‘revisionist’ histories?
- In what ways did Robert Peel and the other main architects of the ‘new police’ seek to minimise the threat they were perceived to pose?
- What are the main elements of the modern, bureaucratic system of justice?
Emergence of a modern criminal justice system
- What was the ‘Bloody Code’?
- What were the main reasons for the ending of transportation?
- What are the main origins of probation?
Crime and violence in history
- What are the main differences between Gatrell’s and Taylor’s views of what crime statistics tell us about trends in crime?
- What are the main facets of a ‘modern’ understanding of crime?
- In the absence of official criminal statistics, how have historians attempted to assess levels of crime in previous periods?
Chapter 3 – Crime Data and Crime Trends
Official statistics
- When were official crime statistics first collected in Britain?
- What is meant by attrition?
- What are the main reasons people fail to report crimes to the police?
- Why might the police decide to, or fail to, record crimes that are reported to them?
Victimisation surveys
- What are the main ways in which the British Crime Survey has changed since it was first undertaken in the early 1980s?
- Why might local crime surveys differ in their findings from national surveys?
- Why is it difficult to compare police-recorded crime with the findings of victimisation surveys?
- Which two main changes affected official crime statistics after 1998?
Data on offenders
- What is a ‘standard list’ offence?
- Approximately what proportion of males have a criminal conviction by their 53rd birthday?
- What sorts of studies use the self-report method?
Chapter 4 – Crime and the Media
Media representations of crime
- What are the two main ways identified by Reiner of understanding why media representations of crime come to be as they are?
- What are some of the main values underpinning the idea of ‘newsworthiness’?
- In what ways are the new social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger thought to have an impact on crime?
- How has ‘media effects’ research generally been conducted?
Moral panics
- What is meant by ‘folk devil’ and ‘moral panic’?
- Describe how ‘deviancy amplification’ works.
- What are some of the main criticisms levelled at moral panic theory?
- Think of recent examples of ‘moral panic’. How well do they fit the theory?
Policing and the media
- In what way might ‘an enduring, if not ecstatically happy, marriage’ be a good description of the relationship between the police and the media?
- What are some of the difficulties involved in policing the internet?
- In what ways might the ‘war on terror’ illustrate the changing relationship between war and the media?
Chapter 5 – Politics of Crime and Its Control
- What led to the advent of penal welfarism?
- How can ‘managerialism’ be characterised within the UK?
- How did the 1988 US presidential election portray three key messages for politicians concerning crime?
Chapter 6 – Classicism and Positivism
Classicism
- What are the main features of classical criminology?
- What three factors did Beccaria identify as being central to the prevention of crime?
- What is utilitarianism and how is it applied to punishment?
- What is the pleasure–pain principle?
- Of what types of punishment was Bentham particularly critical?
Positivistic criminology
- What are the main features of positivistic criminology?
- What is meant by ‘atavism’?
- What is ‘somatyping’?
- What are the three main body types identified by William Sheldon?
Chapter 7 – Biological Positivism
Genetic factors
- What is meant by ‘eugenics’?
- In what ways might the study of identical twins be useful in the study of crime?
- What is the link thought to be between the possession of an extra Y chromosome and criminal behaviour?
Biochemical factors
- What might the links be between ADHD and offending behaviour?
- What are the main methodological difficulties in trying to establish a link between brain dysfunction and criminality?
- In what ways might nutrition and diet be linked to criminality?
Chapter 8 – Psychological Positivism
Psychoanalysis and crime and learning theories
- What did Bowlby mean by ‘maternal deprivation’ and how was this thought to link with crime?
- What is the fundamental idea in ‘operant learning’ theory?
- In what ways is ‘differential association’ a psychological theory?
- What was being tested in the Bobo doll experiment?
- In what ways might we consider offenders to be rational actors?
Cognitive theories
- What are the three main types of ‘thinking error’ identified by Yochelson and Samelow?
- In what ways might ‘moral development’ be linked with offending behaviour?
- What are the three main personality components identified by Eysenck?
- How might intelligence be linked to crime?
- Why are theories linking intelligence to offending often so controversial?
Chapter 9 – Durkheim, anomie and strain
Durkheim and criminology
- What are the main characteristics of mechanical and organic solidarity?
- Why does anomie occur in the process of social change?
- What are the four main types of suicide identified by Durkheim?
- What are the key criminological insights that might be said to have their origins in Durkheim’s work?
Merton and anomie
- What were Merton’s main criticisms of American culture?
- What are the main forms of adaptation described by Merton?
- What is meant by relative deprivation?
Later strain theory
- What are strains? Give some examples.
- What are the central components of general strain theory?
- Why do strains increase the likelihood of crime?
- What are the main characteristics of institutional anomie theory?
Chapter 10 – The Chicago School, Subcultures, and Cultural Criminology
The Chicago School
- What is meant by an ecological approach?
- Explain what is meant by the zone of transition and what its importance was held to be
- What is differential association?
- Why might critics have suggested that Chicago sociology was atheoretical?
Cultures and subcultures
- What are the three main forms of subculture identified by Cloward and Ohlin?
- What are the main techniques of neutralisation?
- In what ways do subcultures offer ‘magical’ solutions to structural problems?
- What are the main criticisms of subcultural theory?
Cultural criminology
- In what ways does cultural criminology link with earlier interactionist and subcultural theory?
- In what ways might ‘culture’ and ‘crime’ link? Give examples
- Do rational choice and situational crime prevention have anything to offer the study of expressive crimes?
Chapter 11 – Interactionism and Labelling Theory
Part 1
- What was Garfinkel attempting to illustrate when he asked his students to behave as if they were in a hotel when they went home?
- How might social control create deviant activity?
- Why is the concept of ‘the self’ important to an understanding of deviant activity?
- What is the difference between primary and secondary deviance?
Part 2
- How did Becker define deviance?
- What is a self-fulfilling prophecy?
- How does the process of deviancy amplification work?
- What is meant by disintegrative and reintegrative shaming?
Chapter 12 – Control Theories
Part 1
- What, for Reckless, are the main differences between inner and outer containment?
- In what way is the idea of ‘techniques of neutralisation’ linked with control theory?
- What did Matza mean by the idea of ‘drifting’ into delinquency?
- According to Hirschi, what are the four main elements of the social bond?
Part 2
- What do Gottfredson and Hirschi mean when they call their approach to explaining crime a ‘general theory’?
- What are the main lines of criticism of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime?
- What is a control ratio?
Chapter 13 – Radical and Critical Criminology
Part 1
- What is meant by ‘criminalisation’?
- What is the ‘primitive rebellion’ thesis?
- What is meant when we describe radical sociological theories as generally structuralist in character?
Part 2
- What is peacemaking criminology?
- By describing itself as ‘new’ what was the ‘new criminology’ distinguishing itself from?
- What did Gramsci mean by the term ‘hegemony’?
- What is ‘zemiology’ and why are its proponents critical of traditional criminology?
Chapter 14 – Realist Criminology
Left realism
- What feature of earlier radical theories led Jock Young to characterise them as ‘left impossibilism’?
- What are the four main parts of the ‘square of crime’?
- Why did left realists embrace the crime survey as a useful research method?
- What have been the main criticisms of left realism?
Right realism
- Why might critics refer to right realism as ‘naïve realism’?
- What are the main differences between left and right realism?
- Why, according to James Q. Wilson, did crime increase so markedly after the Second World War?
- How did Herrnstein and Murray link IQ and crime?
- According to Charles Murray, what is the connection between crime and the underclass?
Chapter 15 – Contemporary Classicism
Rational choice theory
- Why might approaches to understanding crime which focus on opportunity and rational choice rather than, say, strain, anomie or labelling, have become popular since the 1970s?
- What is meant by ‘bounded rationality’?
- What is a ‘crime script’?
Routine activity theory
- How do Cohen and Felson link changes in routine activities to post-war trends in crime?
- What are the three components necessary for the commission of a crime according to routine activity theory?
- In relation to target suitability what does VIVA stand for?
Chapter 16 – Feminist Criminology
Part 1
- What did Lombroso and Ferrero suggest were the major indications of the ‘extreme perversity’ of the female born criminal?
- What is the ‘emancipation thesis’?
- What was Carol Smart’s major criticism of the idea of a feminist criminology?
Part 2
- What does Carlen mean by the term ‘carceral clawback’?
- What are the main characteristics of a feminist methodology?
- What have been the major impacts of feminism in the area of victimology?
- What is meant by ‘hegemonic masculinity’?
Chapter 17 – Late Modernity, Governmentality and Risk
Part 1
- How might you distinguish between the Nightwatchman State, the Keynesian State and the New Regulatory State?
- How was it intended that the panopticon should work?
- What evidence can you see of the dispersal of surveillance techniques in modern society?
- What is responsibilisation?
Part 2
- What was Cohen attempting to convey with his fishing metaphor?
- According to Shearing and Stenning how does social control work within Disney World?
- What other examples can you think of in which control systems are largely informal and rely on cooperation rather than punishment?
- What are the main characteristics of the ‘new penology’?
Chapter 18 – Victims, Victimisation and Victimology
- What are the main differences between positivist and critical or radical victimology?
- In what ways is criminal victimisation unevenly distributed?
- What is meant by ‘multiple’ or ‘repeat victimisation’?
- What is the range of potential consequences of criminal victimisation?
- Why is crime experienced by the homeless or the elderly relatively invisible?
- What is meant by the idea that fear of crime is a ‘problem in itself’?
- How might fear of crime be ‘functional’?
Chapter 19 – White-collar and Corporate Crime
- What have been the main criticisms of Edwin Sutherland’s definition of white-collar crime?
- How might you distinguish between corporate and white-collar crime?
- What are the main forms of white-collar crime?
- Can Ditton’s observation that fiddling ‘epitomises the capitalist “spirit”’ be applied to white-collar crime generally?
- What is meant by the term ‘state-corporate crime’?
- What are the main theoretical approaches to understanding white-collar crime?
- What are the problems with the ‘bad apple’ theory of corporate offending?
- Why should we be concerned about fraud if many of the losses are covered by insurance?
- Why are legal controls considered to be so ineffective against white-collar crime?
Chapter 20 – Organised Crime
- In relation to organised crime what is meant by an ‘alien conspiracy theory’?
- What is meant by ‘ethnic succession’ in relation to organised crime?
- What have been the main criticisms of the Mafia-conspiracy thesis?
- In what ways were the conditions in which organised crime took place different in America and Britain in the mid-twentieth century?
- What is the main difference between human smuggling and trafficking?
- What are the main ways of conceptualising drugs trafficking?
- What have been the main lines of criticism of some of the work on transnational organised crime?
- What is meant by the phrase transnational policing?
- Who is more ‘organised’, law enforcement agencies or the organised criminals?
Chapter 21 – Violent and Property Crime
Part 1
- What are the main forms of violent crime?
- What proportion of overall crime does violent crime account for?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of the two main methods of measuring levels of violent crime?
- Why is stalking considered to be a crime of violence?
- Are we right to show such concern about levels of gun crime?
Part 2
- What has been the general trend in violent crime over the last 500 years?
- What is meant by the idea of a ‘civilising process’ in relation to historical trends in violent crime?
- What has been the general trend in violent crime over the past 15 years?
- What are the main factors affecting the measurement of recorded violent crime in the last 15 years?
Part 3
- When people talk about riots having a ‘flashpoint’, what do they mean?
- In what ways might ‘consumerism’ have been a motivating force in the 2011 riots?
- What were the main ways in which the events of August 2011 differed from riots in earlier years?
- What broad similarities might be identified?
Part 4
- What are considered to be the main characteristics of ‘hate crime’?
- What sort of social groups can ‘hate crime’ be directed against?
- When did hate crime specifically enter the criminal law in the UK?
- What difficulties might the police face in enforcing hate crime laws?
- What justification is there for the increased penalties attached to hate crimes?
- What are the main criticisms of such increased penalties?
Part 5
- What proportion of overall crime is made up of property crime?
- Who is most at risk from burglary?
- What have been the main trends in property crime over the last two decades?
- Should we be concerned about car crime?
Chapter 22 – Drugs and Alcohol
Part 1
- What is meant by ‘normalisation’ in the context of youthful drug use?
- What are the main possible connections between drug use and crime?
- How might you distinguish between high-level, middle-level and retail-level drugs markets?
- What is the difference between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ retail drugs markets?
Part 2
- What are the main legal restrictions on the purchase and consumption of alcohol?
- What does the term ‘binge drinking’ mean?
- What are the possible relationships between alcohol and crime?
- What are the main ‘harms’ associated with alcohol consumption?
Chapter 23 – Penology and Punishment
Part 1
- What are the main philosophical justifications for punishment?
- What are the main differences between utilitarian and retributive approaches to punishment?
- What is meant by ‘Just Deserts’?
- What is the difference between ordinal and cardinal proportionality?
Part 2
- Why, according to Durkheim, has there been a shift from repressive to restitutive sanctioning?
- What did Rusche and Kirkhheimer mean when they said, ‘Every system of production tends to discover punishments which correspond to its productive relationships’?
- What did Elias mean when he talked of a ‘civilising process’?
- What is the importance of the ‘panopticon’ to Foucault’s ideas?
- Are contemporary commentators right to talk of ‘mass incarceration’?
Chapter 24 – Understanding Criminal Justice
Part 1
- What are the main government departments with responsibilities for criminal justice?
- What are the main responsibilities of each?
- In what ways might the term ‘system’ in criminal justice system be considered problematic?
Part 2
- What are the two main criminal courts in England and Wales and what are the main differences between them?
- Think of three reasons why criminal justice agencies might find it difficult to work with each other
- What is meant by managerialism or new public management?
Part 3
- What are the main differences between an adversarial and an inquisitorial system of justice?
- What are the major differences between Packer’s models of ‘due process’ and ‘crime control’?
- What are the two ways in which the term ‘crime control’ is used in Packer’s model?
Chapter 25 – Crime prevention and community safety
Part 1
- What are the main differences between ‘primary’, ‘secondary’ and ‘tertiary’ crime prevention?
- What did the shift in terminology from ‘crime prevention’ to ‘community safety’ signal?
- What did the shift in terminology from ‘community safety’ to ‘crime and disorder reduction’ signal?
- What is the basic argument in Wilson and Kelling’s ‘Broken Windows’ article?
- What is meant by ‘pre-court disposal’ and what do they consist of?
Part 2
- What different types of crime displacement are there?
- What is meant by ‘hot spots’ and ‘repeat victimisation’?
- What are the major types of ‘repeat victimisation’?
- What are the shortcomings of situational and community crime prevention?
Chapter 26 – Policing
Part 1
- What are the main representative bodies in policing?
- What proportion of current police service strength is made of minority ethnic officers?
- What are the main functions of the police?
- What are the main material traces collected at scenes of crimes?
- How has the police use of the power of arrest changed in recent times?
Part 2
- What are the main safeguards provided by PACE?
- What are the primary responsibilities of the custody officer?
- What are the main restrictions on police powers to stop and search?
- What are the main types of ‘vulnerable suspect’?
- How has the right to silence been reformed?
Part 3
- What are the main characteristics of police culture?
- What are the main causes of police corruption?
- What do we mean by zero-tolerance policing?
- Distinguish between the three main models of police governance
Chapter 27 – Criminal Courts and the Court Process
- What is the relevance of Article 5 of the European Convention to questions of bail/remand?
- What are the four main options open to courts in relation to the bail/remand decision?
- What are the three main grounds for refusing bail?
- What are the main considerations in the mode of trial decision?
- What is the difference between charge bargaining and plea bargaining?
- What are the main avenues of appeal in criminal cases?
- What are the main sources of miscarriages of justice?
Chapter 28 – Sentencing and Non-custodial Penalties
Part 1
- What are the main non-custodial sentences available to the criminal courts?
- What have been the major trends in the use of non-custodial penalties in the last 20 years?
- What were the major reasons for the swift retreat from the 1991 Criminal Justice Act?
- What was the purpose of renaming probation and community service orders?
- What is meant by ‘limited retributivism’?
Part 2
- What are the main aims of the modern probation service?
- How do these differ from probation service aims earlier in the twentieth century?
- What are the main changes in the governance of the probation service in the past decade?
Chapter 29 – Prisons and Imprisonment
Part 1
- What did Woolf consider the three main elements contributing to a stable prison system?
- What is meant by ‘incarceration rate’?
- What have been the main contributory factors to the increasing use of the prison in England and Wales?
- How would you describe the current pattern of the use of the death penalty around the world?
Part 2
- In the context of imprisonment, what does Goffman mean by the ‘mortification of the self’? Give examples.
- What is the importance of the distinction between being sent to prison as punishment rather than for punishment?
- What are the three main forms of early release from prison?
- What are the main human rights protocols relating to the treatment of people in prison?
Chapter 30 – Youth Crime and Youth Justice
Part 1
- What did Hirschi and Gottfredson mean when they said the age–crime curve is one of the ‘brute facts of criminology’?
- What is meant by the ‘peak age of offending’?
- What do self-report studies have to tell us about patterns of youthful offending among different ethnic groups?
- Why might young people feel over-controlled and under-protected?
Part 2
- When did the punitive shift in youth justice begin to take place?
- What are the main examples of the influence of managerialism in youth justice?
- What are the main youth justice components of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998?
- What was the principle of doli incapax?
- How extensive has the influence of restorative justice been in youth justice?
- Can the exemplary sentences imposed on juveniles in the aftermath of the riots be justified?
Part 3
- What were the main criticisms levelled at the New Labour government’s anti-social behaviour agenda?
- What evidence is there that young people in custody are particularly vulnerable?
- What evidence is there of success in the use of referral orders in youth justice – and what problems are there?
- What are the main similarities and contrasts between New Labour’s youth justice and what has followed since 2015?
Chapter 31 – Restorative Justice
Part 1
- What are the main differences between mainstream criminal justice and restorative justice?
- What did Christie mean when he said conflicts had been stolen?
- What are generally held to be the main objectives of restorative justice?
- How do disintegrative and reintegrative shaming differ?
Part 2
- What are the five main types of restorative justice programme?
- What are the main differences between victim–offender mediation and conferencing?
- What are the main differences between healing and sentencing circles?
- What are the three main stakeholders in restorative justice identified by McCold?
Part 3
- What are the main claims of restorative justice?
- What are the main features of Ayres and Braithwaite’s ‘enforcement pyramid’?
- What is being suggested when critics talk of restorative justice re-colonising indigenous practices?
Chapter 32 – Race, Crime and Criminal Justice
Part 1
- What is the difference between ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’?
- What are the main sources of data we might use to examine ethnic differences in offending patterns?
- What is meant by a ‘racist incident’?
Part 2
- What are the main barriers to increasing minority representation in the police?
- What is meant by ‘available population’ in relation to stop and search?
- What is meant by the phrase ‘over-policed and under-protected’?
Chapter 33 – Gender, Crime and Justice
Part 1
- What are the main differences in the pattern of male and female offending?
- Do men and women tend to give different reasons when explaining their offending?
- Why might levels of female offending be rising?
Part 2
- Why might the cautioning rates for women be higher than those for men?
- Given that, historically, imprisonment rates for women have been lower than for men, why should we be concerned about women’s imprisonment?
- Why are women’s imprisonment rates increasing?
- What are the two main approaches to understanding women’s experiences of criminal justice?
Part 3
- What are the main ways of understanding levels of fear of crime among women?
- What have been the main policy changes in the policing of sexual violence against women?
- How might high levels of attrition in rape cases be understood?
Chapter 34 – Criminal and Forensic Psychology
Part 1
- What are ‘risk’ and ‘protective factors’?
- What are the main categories of risk factors?
- In what ways, as Laub and Sampson argue, might historical time and geographic place be crucial for understanding lives in their full complexity?
- What are the differences between ‘adolescence-limited’ and ‘life-course persistent’ offenders?
- What are the main differences between Sampson and Laub’s, Moffitt’s and Farrington’s theories?
- What are the possible links between mental disorder and crime?
Part 2
- What are the main differences between ‘statistical profiling’ and the FBI’s approach?
- What is ‘investigative interviewing’?
- What are the main models for understanding confessions?
- How does a polygraph work?
- How might ‘cognitive load’ help one distinguish someone lying from someone telling the truth?
Part 3
- What are the three main stages involved in understanding the process of remembering information?
- How can vulnerable witnesses be protected?
- What is ‘scientific jury selection’?
- What are the basic facets of cognitive behavioural approaches to treatment?
Chapter 35 – Green Criminology
- How might we set out the general features of ‘green criminology’?
- Why are discussions of ‘neo-liberalism’, ‘globalisation’ and ‘risk’ relevant to the field of green criminology?
- What is ‘environmental harm’?
Chapter 36 – Globalisation, Terrorism and Human Rights
Part 1
- What are the main characteristics of globalisation?
- What is meant by ‘criminalisation’ in the context of migration?
Part 2
- What are the main characteristics of terrorism?
- What are the main differences between ‘old’ and ‘new’ wars?
Part 3
- What types of activity are classified as ‘state crime’?
- What is meant by the term ‘genocide’?
- What are we referring to when we talk of ‘war crimes’?
Part 4
- Not all human rights are absolute. What are the other two main forms of rights in the Human Rights Act?
- What are the main neutralisation techniques in relation to human rights abuses?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of truth commissions?
Chapter 37 – Understanding Criminological Research
Part 1
- For what types of research might you select primarily quantitative methods?
- For what types of research might you select primarily qualitative methods?
- What are the differences between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ questions?
- What is a leading question? Why are leading questions problematic in the context of research?
- What are the main differences between structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews?
Part 2
- What are the main differences between probability and non-probability sampling?
- What is quota sampling and where might it be used?
- What is the difference between numerical and categorical data?
- What is the primary difference between experimental and quasi-experimental methods?
Chapter 38 – Doing Criminological Research
- How does ‘the party’ scenario help you test whether or not you have a researchable question?
- Why is it important to carry out a literature review?
- What steps are involved in hypothetico-deductive theory?
- What are the three central limitations of grounded theory?
- What are ‘gatekeepers’ in the research process?