Mass Killings: The Role of the Media

Our latest short film looks at the relationship between fame-seeking mass killers and the media.

Mass Killers: Mythologies

Mass killings, described by the FBI as four or more unlawful killings in a single event, devastate communities and create fear across countries. But if we’re going to begin to understand what makes someone randomly kill large numbers of people, it’s important to distinguish between the evidence and the mythology. This film, featuring the work […]

Beyond the Bystander Effect

The Bystander Effect has long been used to explain the general lack of public help towards people who have been harmed, or are at risk of harm. This film looks at more recent research that takes us beyond the Bystander Effect and explains the lack of help for James Bulger, a two-year-old who was abducted […]

Introducing Geographical Offender Profiling

Profiling: Geographical offender profiling is now being used by police forces around the world to help focus investigations into a connected series of crimes where there are no obvious suspects. This film introduces students to the principles and key concepts of geographical profiling – least effort principle, distance decay, crime pattern theory and opportunity spaces […]

Geographical Profiling Applied: the M25 Rapist

Profiling: One evening a couple were watching tv when they heard a knock on their front door. On the doorstep was a shivering 10-year-old girl wearing only a t-shirt. She had been snatched from outside a community centre in town and raped. The following summer there were eight further rapes of girls and women around […]

Criminal Offender Profiling

Profiling: An area that’s captured the public imagination from tv shows like Mindhunter and Criminal Minds is criminal profiling. But what’s the reality behind the hype? What is criminal profiling? What do profilers do? Does profiling work?   In this film we address these questions through contemporary UK profilers and psychologists, look at some famous […]

Hate Crime in Everyday Life

Crime and Deviance: Hate Crime is high profile now. But the cases of violent hate crime we see in the media are just the tip of the iceberg: things like verbal abuse, bullying, threats, and damage to property have become just another part of everyday life for many people. This film, featuring one of the […]

Durkheim and the Functions of Crime

Crime and Deviance: It seems obvious to most people that crime and social order are opposites. But more than a century ago French sociologist Emile Durkheim suggested that it wasn’t that simple. This film looks at the introduction of Zero Tolerance Policing in New York, the imprisonment of Dr Jack Kevorkian for assisting terminally-ill patients […]

Relighting the Streets: A Study of Situational Crime Prevention

Crime and Deviance: Does situational crime prevention actually work, or is crime simply displaced to a neighbouring area? This film tells the story of an experiment in situational crime prevention by the Cambridge Institute of Criminology conducted in Stoke-on-Trent, a medium sized British city. The streets of an experimental area were re-lit with more powerful […]

Crime and the Night-Time Economy

Crime and Deviance: The concept of social control is an important one in the sociology of crime and deviance and this short film, featuring contributions from Phil Hadfield and Simon Winlow, co-authors of “Bouncers“, looks at how social control in the Night-Time Economy is increasingly created and maintained by professional Bouncers rather than the police. […]