ShortCuts to Sociology: Organised Crime

A few years ago we did some interviews for a film on organised crime that, for one reason or another (money, probably), didn’t get made – if memory serves we were going to include a version on ShortCuts to Crime and Deviance Vol. 1 but it didn’t make the final selection. Anyway, I was searching […]

Deviancy Amplification Spiral: Legal Highs

Wilkins’ (1964) concept of a deviancy amplification spiral (or ‘Positive Feedback Loop’ as he called it) has been a staple of the crime and deviance Specification for many years and there’s a range of ways to present the feedback process, both statically and a bit more dynamically. Examples of a “successful” feedback loop are, however, […]

Braithwaite and Restorative Justice: Crime Prevention and Control

Having spent the past couple of years working on Psychology films we’ve decided to turn our efforts towards a new volume of crime videos – a follow-up to “Shortcuts to Crime and Deviance Volume 1” imaginatively called “Volume 2”. We burnt the candle at both ends to come up with that corker. Anyway, one of […]

Sociology ShortCuts: State Crime

The ShortCuts series of films Is designed to give teachers and students very brief introductions to / overviews of a range of contemporary sociological ideas through the medium of leading academics. In this film, Professor Sandra Walklate offers a quick (2-minute) illustrated introduction to the concept of “the criminality of the State”. Please note that […]

Free Chapter: The Psychology of Addictive Behaviour

The third – and probably final – free chapter from Holt and Lewis’ “A2 Psychology: The Student’s Textbook”, this one covers addictive behaviour in terms of main areas: 1. Models Biological, cognitive and learning models of addiction, including explanations for initiation, maintenance and relapse Explanations for specific addictions, including smoking and gambling 2. Factors affecting […]

Crime, Deviance and Methods: Self-report Questionnaire

Opportunities for students to link crime, deviance and research methods in a practical way are often limited by the constraints of time and space – but one simple approach that can be used effectively in the classroom is a self-report crime questionnaire. Although there are a few of these kicking around (from Ann Campbell’s onward…) […]

7 Sims in 7 Days – Day 4: The Anomie Within

This short (5 – 10 minute) sim can be used whenever you want to introduce the concept of anomie, such as if you’re introducing Merton’s Strain Theory or looking at Garfinkel’s breaching experiments. The package includes a little bit of background on breaching experiments and a couple of different anomie variations – mild and strong […]

Seven Sims in Seven Days: The Introduction

I’ve long been interested in the idea of using simulations (and games – see Disclaimer below) as teaching tools – there were a couple of online efforts I created many moons ago when the Internet was still young and frames seemed such a good idea: Education and Differential Achievement: The Sociological Detective was an attempt […]

Sociology ShortCuts: Labelling Theory

Labelling is a staple theory in the sociology of crime – both in its own right (Becker’s concept of the Outsider, for example) and in terms of its incorporation into other theoretical explanations (Radical Criminology, for example) – and in this ShortCut Professor Sandra Walklate outlines some of the theory’s key ideas: Outsiders Social interaction […]

Sociology ShortCuts: Crime, Consumption and Harm

In this ShortCut Dr Matt Follet briefly explains how consumption patterns in contemporary societies link into ideas about environmental / green crime and the concept of harm. It’s available in two flavours and while it’s usual to say that “you pays your money and you takes your choice” this would be a bit superfluous because […]

Psychology ShortCuts: Offender Profiling

As with its sociological sister, ShortCuts to Psychology is a new series of free films designed to clearly and concisely illustrate key ideas and concepts across a range of topics – from family, through deviance to psychological theory and methods. The films are: short: between 30 seconds and a couple of minutes focused on definitions, explanations and […]

The Crime and Deviance Channel

The Channel is a collection of original resources – Text, PowerPoint, Audio and Video – designed to complement the teaching of crime and deviance. It’s been running since 2010 and we’ve recently decided to give it a complete redesign, partly because the old design was getting a bit long-in-the-tooth and partly because hardware and browser […]

Crime, Deviance and Labelling

This is a short discussion piece about Labelling (and Labelling Theory) based on the following Guardian article: Smash the mafia elite: we should treat offshore wealth as terrorist finance Aside from the issues it raises about globalisation, social class and social inequality, this article is also useful as a contemporary example of labelling theory. How, […]

White-collar Crime PowerPoint

In my various travels around the web I pick-up bits-and-pieces that I think might be useful and this PowerPoint presentation on White-Collar Crime is one such piece. I don’t know who produced it (the meta data gave “IT Support” as the author, which wasn’t much use) and it seems to be one of a pair […]