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?

Introduction

1. Why is history important to our understanding of criminal justice?
2. What are the main differences in approach in ‘traditional’ and ‘revisionist’ histories?
3. 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?
4. What are the main elements of the modern, bureaucratic system of justice?

Emergence of a modern criminal justice system

1. What was the ‘Bloody Code’?
2. What were the main reasons for the ending of transportation?
3. What are the main origins of probation?

Crime and violence in history

1. What are the main differences between Gatrell’s and Taylor’s 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?

Official statistics

1. When were official crime statistics first collected in Britain?
2. What is meant by attrition?
3. What are the main reasons people fail to report crimes to the police?
4. Why might the police decide to, or fail to, record crimes that are reported to them?

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 is a ‘standard list’ offence?
2. Approximately what proportion of males have a criminal conviction by their 53rd birthday?
3. What sorts of studies use the self-report method?

Media representations of crime

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

1. What is meant by ‘folk devil’ and ‘moral panic’?
2. Describe how ‘deviancy amplification’ works.
3. What are some of the main criticisms levelled at moral panic theory?
4. Think of recent examples of ‘moral panic’. How well do they fit the theory?

Policing and the media

1. In what way might ‘an enduring, if not ecstatically happy, marriage’ be a good description of the relationship between the police and the media?
2. What are some of the difficulties involved in policing the internet?
3. In what ways might the ‘war on terror’ illustrate the changing relationship between war and the media?

1. What led to the advent of penal welfarism?
2. How can ‘managerialism’ be characterised within the UK?
3. How did the 1988 US presidential election portray three key messages for politicians concerning crime?

Classicism

1. What are the main features of classical criminology?
2. What three factors did Beccaria identify as being central to the prevention of crime?
3. What is utilitarianism and how is it applied to punishment?
4. What is the pleasure–pain principle?
5. Of what types of punishment was Bentham particularly critical?

Positivistic criminology

1. What are the main features of positivistic criminology?
2. What is meant by ‘atavism’?
3. What is ‘somatyping’?
4. What are the three main body types identified by William Sheldon?

Genetic factors

1. What is meant by ‘eugenics’?
2. In what ways might the study of identical twins be useful in the study of crime?
3. What is the link thought to be between the possession of an extra Y chromosome and criminal behaviour?

Biochemical factors

1. What might the links be between ADHD and offending behaviour?
2. What are the main methodological difficulties in trying to establish a link between brain dysfunction and criminality?
3. In what ways might nutrition and diet be linked to criminality?

Psychoanalysis and crime and learning theories

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?

Durkheim and criminology

1. What are the main characteristics of mechanical and organic solidarity?
2. Why does anomie occur in the process of social change?
3. What are the four main types of suicide identified by Durkheim?
4. What are the key criminological insights that might be said to have their origins in Durkheim’s work?

Merton and anomie

1. What were Merton’s main criticisms of American culture?
2. What are the main forms of adaptation described by Merton?
3. What is meant by relative deprivation?

Later strain theory

1. What are strains? Give some examples.
2. What are the central components of general strain theory?
3. Why do strains increase the likelihood of crime?
4. What are the main characteristics of institutional anomie theory?

The Chicago School

1. What is meant by an ecological approach?
2. Explain what is meant by the zone of transition and what its importance was held to be
3. What is differential association?
4. Why might critics have suggested that Chicago sociology was atheoretical?

Cultures and subcultures

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 1

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?
2. How might social control create deviant activity?
3. Why is the concept of ‘the self’ important to an understanding of deviant activity?
4. What is the difference between primary and secondary deviance?

Part 2

1. How did Becker define deviance?
2. What is a self-fulfilling prophecy?
3. How does the process of deviancy amplification work?
4. What is meant by disintegrative and reintegrative shaming?

Part 1

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 Hirschi’s general theory of crime?
3. What is a control ratio?

Part 1

1. What is meant by ‘criminalisation’?
2. What is the ‘primitive rebellion’ thesis?
3. What is meant when we describe radical sociological theories as generally structuralist in character?

Part 2

1. What is peacemaking criminology?
2. By describing itself as ‘new’ what was the ‘new criminology’ distinguishing itself from?
3. What did Gramsci mean by the term ‘hegemony’?
4. What is ‘zemiology’ and why are its proponents critical of traditional criminology?

Left realism

1. What feature of earlier radical theories led Jock Young to characterise them as ‘left impossibilism’?
2. What are the four main parts of the ‘square of crime’?
3. Why did left realists embrace the crime survey as a useful research method?
4. What have been the main criticisms of left realism?

Right realism

1. Why might critics refer to right realism as ‘naïve realism’?
2. What are the main differences between left and right realism?
3. Why, according to James Q. Wilson, did crime increase so markedly after the Second World War?
4. How did Herrnstein and Murray link IQ and crime?
5. According to Charles Murray, what is the connection between crime and the underclass?

Rational choice theory

1. 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?
2. What is meant by ‘bounded rationality’?
3. What is a ‘crime script’?

Routine activity theory

1. How do Cohen and Felson link changes in routine activities to post-war trends in crime?
2. What are the three components necessary for the commission of a crime according to routine activity theory?
3. In relation to target suitability what does VIVA stand for?

Part 1

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 Smart’s major criticism of the idea of a feminist criminology?

Part 2

1. What does Carlen mean by the term ‘carceral clawback’?
2. What are the main characteristics of a feminist methodology?
3. What have been the major impacts of feminism in the area of victimology?
4. What is meant by ‘hegemonic masculinity’?

Part 1

1. How might you distinguish between the Nightwatchman State, the Keynesian State and the New Regulatory State?
2. How was it intended that the panopticon should work?
3. What evidence can you see of the dispersal of surveillance techniques in modern society?
4. What is responsibilisation?

Part 2

1. What was Cohen attempting to convey with his fishing metaphor?
2. According to Shearing and Stenning how does social control work within Disney World?
3. What other examples can you think of in which control systems are largely informal and rely on cooperation rather than punishment?
4. What are the main characteristics of the ‘new penology’?

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’?

1. What have been the main criticisms of Edwin Sutherland’s definition of white-collar crime?
2. How might you distinguish between corporate and white-collar crime?
3. What are the main forms of white-collar crime?
4. Can Ditton’s observation that fiddling ‘epitomises the capitalist “spirit”’ be applied to white-collar crime generally?
5. What is meant by the term ‘state-corporate crime’?
6. What are the main theoretical approaches to understanding white-collar crime?
7.  What are the problems with the ‘bad apple’ theory of corporate offending?
8. Why should we be concerned about fraud if many of the losses are covered by insurance?
9. Why are legal controls considered to be so ineffective against white-collar crime?

1. In relation to organised crime what is meant by an ‘alien conspiracy theory’?
2. What is meant by ‘ethnic succession’ in relation to organised crime?
3. What have been the main criticisms of the Mafia-conspiracy thesis?
4. In what ways were the conditions in which organised crime took place different in America and Britain in the mid-twentieth century?
5. What is the main difference between human smuggling and trafficking?
6. What are the main ways of conceptualising drugs trafficking?
7. What have been the main lines of criticism of some of the work on transnational organised crime?
8. What is meant by the phrase transnational policing?
9. Who is more ‘organised’, law enforcement agencies or the organised criminals?

Part 1

1.  What are the main forms of violent crime?
2.  What proportion of overall crime does violent crime account for?
3.  What are the advantages and disadvantages of the two main methods of measuring levels of violent crime?
4.  Why is stalking considered to be a crime of violence?
5.  Are we right to show such concern about levels of gun crime?

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

1. What are considered to be the main characteristics of ‘hate crime’?
2.  What sort of social groups can ‘hate crime’ be directed against?
3.  When did hate crime specifically enter the criminal law in the UK?
4.  What difficulties might the police face in enforcing hate crime laws?
5.  What justification is there for the increased penalties attached to hate crimes?
6. What are the main criticisms of such increased penalties?

Part 5

1.  What proportion of overall crime is made up of property crime?
2.  Who is most at risk from burglary?
3. What have been the main trends in property crime over the last two decades?
4.  Should we be concerned about car crime?

Part 1

1. What is meant by ‘normalisation’ in the context of youthful drug use?
2.  What are the main possible connections between drug use and crime?
3.  How might you distinguish between high-level, middle-level and retail-level drugs markets?
4.  What is the difference between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ retail drugs markets?

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 1

1. What are the main philosophical justifications for punishment?
2.  What are the main differences between utilitarian and retributive approaches to punishment?
3. What is meant by ‘Just Deserts’?
4. What is the difference between ordinal and cardinal proportionality?

Part 2

1. Why, according to Durkheim, has there been a shift from repressive to restitutive sanctioning?
2. What did Rusche and Kirkhheimer mean when they said, ‘Every system of production tends to discover punishments which correspond to its productive relationships’?
3. What did Elias mean when he talked of a ‘civilising process’?
4. What is the importance of the ‘panopticon’ to Foucault’s ideas?
5. Are contemporary commentators right to talk of ‘mass incarceration’?

Part 1

1. What are the main government departments with responsibilities for criminal justice?
2. What are the main responsibilities of each?
3. In what ways might the term ‘system’ in criminal justice system be considered problematic?

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

1. What are the main differences between an adversarial and an inquisitorial system of justice?
2. What are the major differences between Packer’s models of ‘due process’ and ‘crime control’?
3. What are the two ways in which the term ‘crime control’ is used in Packer’s model?

Part 1

1. What are the main differences between ‘primary’, ‘secondary’ and ‘tertiary’ crime prevention?
2. What did the shift in terminology from ‘crime prevention’ to ‘community safety’ signal?
3. What did the shift in terminology from ‘community safety’ to ‘crime and disorder reduction’ signal?
4. What is the basic argument in Wilson and Kelling’s ‘Broken Windows’ article?
5. What is meant by ‘pre-court disposal’ and what do they consist of?

Part 2

1. What different types of crime displacement are there?
2. What is meant by ‘hot spots’ and ‘repeat victimisation’?
3. What are the major types of ‘repeat victimisation’?
4. What are the shortcomings of situational and community crime prevention?

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

1. What are the main safeguards provided by PACE?
2. What are the primary responsibilities of the custody officer?
3. What are the main restrictions on police powers to stop and search?
4. What are the main types of ‘vulnerable suspect’?
5. How has the right to silence been reformed?

Part 3

1. What are the main characteristics of police culture?
2. What are the main causes of police corruption?
3. What do we mean by zero-tolerance policing?
4. Distinguish between the three main models of police governance

1. What is the relevance of Article 5 of the European Convention to questions of bail/remand?
2. What are the four main options open to courts in relation to the bail/remand decision?
3. What are the three main grounds for refusing bail?
4. What are the main considerations in the mode of trial decision?
5. What is the difference between charge bargaining and plea bargaining?
6. What are the main avenues of appeal in criminal cases?
7. What are the main sources of miscarriages of justice?

Part 1

1. What are the main non-custodial sentences available to the criminal courts?
2. What have been the major trends in the use of non-custodial penalties in the last 20 years?
3. What were the major reasons for the swift retreat from the 1991 Criminal Justice Act?
4. What was the purpose of renaming probation and community service orders?
5. What is meant by ‘limited retributivism’?

Part 2

1. What are the main aims of the modern probation service?
2. How do these differ from probation service aims earlier in the twentieth century?
3. What are the main changes in the governance of the probation service in the past decade?

Part 1

1. What did Woolf consider the three main elements contributing to a stable prison system?
2. What is meant by ‘incarceration rate’?
3. What have been the main contributory factors to the increasing use of the prison in England and Wales?
4. How would you describe the current pattern of the use of the death penalty around the world?

Part 2

1. In the context of imprisonment, what does Goffman mean by the ‘mortification of the self’? Give examples.
2. What is the importance of the distinction between being sent to prison as punishment rather than for punishment?
3. What are the three main forms of early release from prison?
4. What are the main human rights protocols relating to the treatment of people in prison?

Part 1

1. What did Hirschi and Gottfredson mean when they said the age–crime 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 government’s 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 Labour’s youth justice and what has followed since 2015?

Part 1

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

1. What are the five main types of restorative justice programme?
2. What are the main differences between victim–offender mediation and conferencing?
3. What are the main differences between healing and sentencing circles?
4. What are the three main stakeholders in restorative justice identified by McCold?

Part 3

1. What are the main claims of restorative justice?
2. What are the main features of Ayres and Braithwaite’s ‘enforcement pyramid’?
3. What is being suggested when critics talk of restorative justice re-colonising indigenous practices?

Part 1

1. What is the difference between ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’?
2. What are the main sources of data we might use to examine ethnic differences in offending patterns?
3. What is meant by a ‘racist incident’?

Part 2

1. What are the main barriers to increasing minority representation in the police?
2. What is meant by ‘available population’ in relation to stop and search?
3. What is meant by the phrase ‘over-policed and under-protected’?

Part 1

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 women’s imprisonment?
3. Why are women’s imprisonment rates increasing?
4. What are the two main approaches to understanding women’s 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 1

1. What are ‘risk’ and ‘protective factors’?
2. What are the main categories of risk factors?
3. In what ways, as Laub and Sampson argue, might historical time and geographic place be crucial for understanding lives in their full complexity?
4. What are the differences between ‘adolescence-limited’ and ‘life-course persistent’ offenders?
5. What are the main differences between Sampson and Laub’s, Moffitt’s and Farrington’s theories?
6. What are the possible links between mental disorder and crime?

Part 2

1. What are the main differences between ‘statistical profiling’ and the FBI’s 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?

1. How might we set out the general features of ‘green criminology’?
2. Why are discussions of ‘neo-liberalism’, ‘globalisation’ and ‘risk’ relevant to the field of green criminology?
3. What is ‘environmental harm’?

Part 1

1. What are the main characteristics of globalisation?
2. What is meant by ‘criminalisation’ in the context of migration?

Part 2

1. What are the main characteristics of terrorism?
2. What are the main differences between ‘old’ and ‘new’ wars?

Part 3

1. What types of activity are classified as ‘state crime’?
2. What is meant by the term ‘genocide’?
3. What are we referring to when we talk of ‘war crimes’?

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 1

1.  For what types of research might you select primarily quantitative methods?
2.  For what types of research might you select primarily qualitative methods?
3. What are the differences between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ questions?
4.  What is a leading question? Why are leading questions problematic in the context of research?
5.  What are the main differences between structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews?

Part 2

1. What are the main differences between probability and non-probability sampling?
2. What is quota sampling and where might it be used?
3.  What is the difference between numerical and categorical data?
4.  What is the primary difference between experimental and quasi-experimental methods?

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?