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. […]

Crimes of the Powerful

Crime and Deviance: This short film illustrates how crimes committed by powerful social actors differ in terms of both: type – the distinction between white-collar, corporate and state crime for example – and extent; how and why such criminality differs from the criminal behaviour of the relatively powerless. The film also features David Whyte talking […]

Moral Panics

Crime and Deviance: This film examines the concepts of moral panic and deviancy amplification through both a classic – Stan Cohen talking about the origins and implications of his concept in the context of Mods and Rockers in the early 1960’s – and contemporary lens: Adrian Beck looks at an example of a recent moral […]

Crime and Gender: Closing the Gap

Crime and Deviance: The most consistent finding in the study of crime is the relationship between crime and gender. In almost every country, over 80% of crime is committed by males. But in recent years, the gender gap has been closing: the male crime rate has been steadily falling while the female crime rate, especially […]

Strain Theory

Crime and Deviance: Robert Merton was one of the first sociologists to look at the relationship between culture and crime and this film provides a clear  and concise introduction to his seminal Strain Theory. The focus here is its application to contemporary consumer societies and its continuing influence on modern theories of crime.

Space, Place and (Broken) Windows

Crime and Deviance: Spatial criminology asks whether it’s possible to reduce crime by changing social spaces. This short film featuring Dr Steven Taylor, begins with Zimbardo’s influential abandoned cars experiment and the development of Wilson and Kelling’s broken windows theory.  It looks at the impact of broken windows policy on the reduction of crime in […]

The Cannibal on Bus 1170

Crime and Deviance: In 2008, Vincent Li murdered and then cannibalised 22 year old Tim McLean on a Greyhound Bus heading for Winnipeg. And the shock waves ran through Canadian society. But when Li was subsequently found unfit to face trail and later released, shock turned to outrage and triggered a social media moral panic. […]