Course Structure

The MSc is comprised of three components:

1. The Core Course

The compulsory core course runs through the first two terms (Michaelmas and Hilary) for the first six weeks of term. The first term of the course focuses on ‘Explanation and Understanding in Criminology’, while the second is concerned with ‘Understanding Criminal Justice’. Topics covered

Explanation and Understanding in Criminology

This first half of the Core Course (taught in Michaelmas Term) seeks to develop understanding of the organizing categories and central claims of a range of modern criminological perspectives of crime and social control. It equips students to recognize the main problems, questions, dichotomies and ideas that have shaped modern criminological thought, and to understand the nature of ‘theory’ and ‘explanation’ within criminology. Attention is paid throughout to the contexts that shape the emergence and reception of modern criminological theory and to the modes of social intervention that different criminological perspectives expressly or implicitly propose. Topics covered vary from year to year but are likely to include: crime and the urban environment, developmental and control theories, routine activities and rational choice theories, crime, inequality and opportunity, crime and culture, and social reactions to crime.

Understanding Criminal Justice

The second half of the course offers students a thorough grounding in the criminological understanding of criminal justice/penal institutions and processes. The core themes of classic research on these processes are introduced, before students are introduced to contemporary issues and controversies in criminal justice and punishment. The course introduces students to competing theoretical perspectives on the criminal justice process and in so doing encourages them to think seriously about the role of the state/criminal law in the regulation of human behaviour and the place and limitations of criminal justice interventions in producing safe societies.Topics covered might include:models of criminal justice, defining and responding to the problem of anti-social behaviour, youth justice, women and criminal justice, the lay magistracy, and parole.

2. Optional subjects

Students will also take five optional modules – two in each of the first two terms and one in the third (Trinity Term). These run for the first six weeks of each term only. The options running in 2011-12 are listed below.

• Crime and the Family
• Research Design and Data Collection
• Social Explanation and Data Analysis
• Sentencing
• Restorative Justice
• Death Penalty
• Statistical Methods for Social Sciences
• Qualitative Methods
• Prisons
• Crime, Political Ideologies and Political Culture
• Victims
• Risk, Security and Criminal Justice
• Comparative Criminal Justice
• Youth Justice
• Public and Private Policing

Brief descriptions of each of these options are available.

In previous years the following options have run, and these may be on offer again in coming years:

• Human Right and Criminal Justice
• Law, Crime and Economics
• Transitional Justice
• Desistance from Crime
• Public Opinion, Crime and Criminal Justice
• Race and Gender
• Policing Global Insecurities
• News Media, Crime and Policy
  

3. Dissertation

In addition to the options students take in all three terms, they will write, during that term, a dissertation of between 8,000 and 10,000 words. This will be researched and written independently under the supervision of a member of academic staff.