Chapter 1 Understanding Crime and Criminology

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?

Chapter 2 Crime and Punishment in History

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 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?

Chapter 3 Crime Data and Crime Trends

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?

Chapter 4 Crime and the Media

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?

Chapter 5 Politics of Crime and Its Control

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?

Chapter 6 Classicism and Positivism

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 pleasurepain 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?

Chapter 7 Biological Positivism

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?

Chapter 8 Psychological Positivism

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?

Chapter 9 Durkheim, anomie and strain

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 Durkheims work?

Merton and anomie

1. What were Mertons 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?

Chapter 10 The Chicago School, Subcultures, and Cultural Criminology

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?

Chapter 11 Interactionism and Labelling Theory

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?

Chapter 12 Control Theories

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 Hirschis general
theory of crime?
3. What is a control ratio?

Chapter 13 Radical and Critical Criminology

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?

Chapter 14 Realist 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 nave 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?

Chapter 15 Contemporary Classicism

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?

Chapter 16 Feminist Criminology

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 Smarts 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?

Chapter 17 Late Modernity, Governmentality and Risk

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?

Chapter 18 Victims, Victimisation and Victimology

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?

Chapter 19 White-collar and Corporate Crime

1. What have been the main criticisms of Edwin Sutherlands 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 Dittons 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?

Chapter 20 Organised 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?

Chapter 21 Violent and Property Crime

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?

Chapter 22 Drugs and Alcohol

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?

Chapter 23 Penology and Punishment

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 Foucaults ideas?
5. Are contemporary commentators right to talk of mass incarceration?

Chapter 24 Understanding Criminal Justice

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 Packers models of due
process and crime control?
3. What are the two ways in which the term crime control is used in
Packers model?

Chapter 25 Crime prevention and community safety

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 Kellings 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?

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

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

Chapter 27 Criminal Courts and the Court Process

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?

Chapter 28 Sentencing and Non-custodial Penalties

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?

Chapter 29 Prisons and Imprisonment

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?

Chapter 30 Youth Crime and Youth Justice

Part 1

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?

Chapter 31 Restorative Justice

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 victimoffender 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 Braithwaites enforcement
pyramid?
3. What is being suggested when critics talk of restorative justice re-
colonising indigenous practices?

Chapter 32 Race, Crime and Criminal Justice

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?

Chapter 33 Gender, Crime and Justice

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 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?

Chapter 34 Criminal and Forensic Psychology

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 Laubs, Moffitts
and Farringtons 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
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?

Chapter 35 Green Criminology

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?

Chapter 36 Globalisation, Terrorism and Human Rights

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?

Chapter 37 Understanding Criminological Research

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?

Chapter 38 Doing Criminological Research

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?