Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. How can crime be understood as (a) a legal definition, and (b) a social
construction definition?
2. In what ways can criminology be considered an interdisciplinary
subject?
3. What, does Garland argue, are the two initially separate streams of
work, which produced modern criminology?
1. What are the main differences between Gatrells and Taylors views of
what crime statistics tell us about trends in crime?
2. What are the main facets of a modern understanding of crime?
3. In the absence of official criminal statistics, how have historians
attempted to assess levels of crime in previous periods?
Victimisation surveys
1. What are the main ways in which the British Crime Survey has changed
since it was first undertaken in the early 1980s?
2. Why might local crime surveys differ in their findings from national
surveys?
3. Why is it difficult to compare police-recorded crime with the findings of
victimisation surveys?
4. Which two main changes affected official crime statistics after 1998?
Data on offenders
1. What are the two main ways identified by Reiner of understanding why
media representations of crime come to be as they are?
2. What are some of the main values underpinning the idea of
newsworthiness?
3. In what ways are the new social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and
BlackBerry Messenger thought to have an impact on crime?
4. How has media effects research generally been conducted?
Moral panics
Positivistic criminology
Biochemical factors
1. What did Bowlby mean by maternal deprivation and how was this
thought to link with crime?
2. What is the fundamental idea in operant learning theory?
3. In what ways is differential association a psychological theory?
4. What was being tested in the Bobo doll experiment?
5. In what ways might we consider offenders to be rational actors?
Cognitive theories
1. What are the three main types of thinking error identified by Yochelson
and Samelow?
2. In what ways might moral development be linked with offending
behaviour?
3. What are the three main personality components identified by Eysenck?
4. How might intelligence be linked to crime?
5. Why are theories linking intelligence to offending often so controversial?
1. What are the three main forms of subculture identified by Cloward and
Ohlin?
2. What are the main techniques of neutralisation?
3. In what ways do subcultures offer magical solutions to structural
problems?
4. What are the main criticisms of subcultural theory?
Cultural criminology
1. In what ways does cultural criminology link with earlier interactionist and
subcultural theory?
2. In what ways might culture and crime link? Give examples
3. Do rational choice and situational crime prevention have anything to
offer the study of expressive crimes?
Part 2
1. What, for Reckless, are the main differences between inner and outer
containment?
2. In what way is the idea of techniques of neutralisation linked with
control theory?
3. What did Matza mean by the idea of drifting into delinquency?
4. According to Hirschi, what are the four main elements of the social
bond?
Part 2
1. What do Gottfredson and Hirschi mean when they call their approach to
explaining crime a general theory?
2. What are the main lines of criticism of Gottfredson and Hirschis general
theory of crime?
3. What is a control ratio?
Part 2
Right realism
1. What did Lombroso and Ferrero suggest were the major indications of
the extreme perversity of the female born criminal?
2. What is the emancipation thesis?
3. What was Carol Smarts major criticism of the idea of a feminist
criminology?
Part 2
Part 2
1. What are the main differences between positivist and critical or radical
victimology?
2. In what ways is criminal victimisation unevenly distributed?
3. What is meant by multiple or repeat victimisation?
4. What is the range of potential consequences of criminal victimisation?
5. Why is crime experienced by the homeless or the elderly relatively
invisible?
6. What is meant by the idea that fear of crime is a problem in itself?
7. How might fear of crime be functional?
Part 2
1. What has been the general trend in violent crime over the last 500
years?
2. What is meant by the idea of a civilising process in relation to historical
trends in violent crime?
3. What has been the general trend in violent crime over the past 15
years?
4. What are the main factors affecting the measurement of recorded
violent crime in the last 15 years?
Part 3
1. When people talk about riots having a flashpoint, what do they mean?
2. In what ways might consumerism have been a motivating force in the
2011 riots?
3. What were the main ways in which the events of August 2011 differed
from riots in earlier years?
4. What broad similarities might be identified?
Part 4
Part 5
Part 2
1. What are the main legal restrictions on the purchase and consumption
of alcohol?
2. What does the term binge drinking mean?
3. What are the possible relationships between alcohol and crime?
4. What are the main harms associated with alcohol consumption?
Part 2
Part 2
1. What are the two main criminal courts in England and Wales and what
are the main differences between them?
2. Think of three reasons why criminal justice agencies might find it difficult
to work with each other
3. What is meant by managerialism or new public management?
Part 3
Part 2
Chapter 26 Policing
Part 1
1. What are the main representative bodies in policing?
2. What proportion of current police service strength is made of minority
ethnic officers?
3. What are the main functions of the police?
4. What are the main material traces collected at scenes of crimes?
5. How has the police use of the power of arrest changed in recent times?
Part 2
Part 3
Part 2
1. What did Hirschi and Gottfredson mean when they said the agecrime
curve is one of the brute facts of criminology?
2. What is meant by the peak age of offending?
3. What do self-report studies have to tell us about patterns of youthful
offending among different ethnic groups?
4. Why might young people feel over-controlled and under-protected?
Part 2
1. When did the punitive shift in youth justice begin to take place?
2. What are the main examples of the influence of managerialism in youth
justice?
3. What are the main youth justice components of the Crime and Disorder
Act 1998?
4. What was the principle of doli incapax?
5. How extensive has the influence of restorative justice been in youth
justice?
6. Can the exemplary sentences imposed on juveniles in the aftermath of
the riots be justified?
Part 3
1. What were the main criticisms levelled at the New Labour governments
anti-social behaviour agenda?
2. What evidence is there that young people in custody are particularly
vulnerable?
3. What evidence is there of success in the use of referral orders in youth
justice and what problems are there?
4. What are the main similarities and contrasts between New Labours
youth justice and what has followed since 2015?
1. What are the main differences between mainstream criminal justice and
restorative justice?
2. What did Christie mean when he said conflicts had been stolen?
3. What are generally held to be the main objectives of restorative justice?
4. How do disintegrative and reintegrative shaming differ?
Part 2
Part 3
Part 2
1. What are the main differences in the pattern of male and female
offending?
2. Do men and women tend to give different reasons when explaining their
offending?
3. Why might levels of female offending be rising?
Part 2
1. Why might the cautioning rates for women be higher than those for
men?
2. Given that, historically, imprisonment rates for women have been lower
than for men, why should we be concerned about womens
imprisonment?
3. Why are womens imprisonment rates increasing?
4. What are the two main approaches to understanding womens
experiences of criminal justice?
Part 3
1. What are the main ways of understanding levels of fear of crime among
women?
2. What have been the main policy changes in the policing of sexual
violence against women?
3. How might high levels of attrition in rape cases be understood?
Part 2
1. What are the main differences between statistical profiling and the
FBIs approach?
2. What is investigative interviewing?
3. What are the main models for understanding confessions?
4. How does a polygraph work?
5. How might cognitive load help one distinguish someone lying from
someone telling the truth?
Part 3
1. What are the three main stages involved in understanding the process
of remembering information?
2. How can vulnerable witnesses be protected?
3. What is scientific jury selection?
4. What are the basic facets of cognitive behavioural approaches to
treatment?
Part 2
Part 4
1. Not all human rights are absolute. What are the other two main forms of
rights in the Human Rights Act?
2. What are the main neutralisation techniques in relation to human rights
abuses?
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of truth commissions?
Part 2
1. How does the party scenario help you test whether or not you have a
researchable question?
2. Why is it important to carry out a literature review?
3. What steps are involved in hypothetico-deductive theory?
4. What are the three central limitations of grounded theory?
5. What are gatekeepers in the research process?