Crime, Justice and the Penal System
This course offers an opportunity to study the phenomenon of crime and the ways it is dealt with by the criminal justice and penal systems. The subject is approached from the socio-legal, philosophical, historical and empirical perspectives. While the main focus of the course is upon the British criminal justice system, international material is incorporated and comparative perspectives are welcomed.
The precise content of the course varies each year. In 2007-08 it will begin by examining criminalization, the limits of the criminal sanction, and the use of non-criminal measures. It then moves on to consider policing, the ,justifications for punishment, and the role of victims in criminal justice. The second term begins with seminars on plea negotiation, the relevance of previous convictions to sentencing, and then moves on to consider prisons, and ethnicity, race and gender in criminal justice. The course concludes with seminars on risk and security, and on the politics of crime control in late modernity.