Prepare a power point presentation for the summary and full details provided given below. The presentation must needs to be of around 10 minutes long when spoken, base length of presentation on that rather than the amount of words. If possible try to use references where applicable from attachment.
The title of the presentation is:
Criminology’s focus on “events which are defined as crime distracts attention from more serious harm” (Hillyard and Tombs, 2005: 7). Explain what this statement means, illustrating your answer with examples of what Hillyard and Tombs refer to as ‘more serious harm’.
Critical Criminology:
Lecture topics and readings:
Below is a list of lecture topics and readings for the module: Critical Criminology. The overall rationale of the module is to introduce you to criminological theories and understandings which depart from mainstream criminology in that they consider crime to be a product of social conflict, unequal power arrangements and social construction. Traditional or orthodox approaches to crime are critically re-evaluated with explicit reference to recent transformations in world economic, social and cultural affairs.
1) Introduction to the module: what is critical criminology?
2) What is wrong with mainstream criminology? A critical look atneo-classicism, neo-positivism, and neo-conservative criminology.
3) Feminist Perspectives
This lecture will examine crime and criminal justice in relation to concepts of masculinity; female involvement in crime; victimisation; domestic violence, the imprisonment and punishment of women; and revisionist feminist critiques of masculine bias; with particular emphasis on sex/gender power relationships in contemporary social life.
4) Conflict, and Marxist Perspectives
This lecture will begin by exploring the view that crime is a consequence of conflict between diverse opposing social groups and the struggle between them for domination;and that formal laws and forms of punishment are a consequence of dominant groups seeking to protect their interests. It then moves on to consider the radical Marxist view that it is capitalism that creates conflict and crime. That crime is linked to structural inequalities that shape class relations in ways that criminalise those whose actions threaten the established capitalist order.
5) Labelling Perspectives
This lecture discusses the contribution of labelling theory and social interactionism to critical criminology; in particular its insight with respect to the meaning making processes directed upon those who are labelled deviant, mad, bad and criminal. Its aim to problematize the taken for granted notion of crime as an act or behaviour by analysing it instead as an effect of a criminalisation process which defines behaviour, is assessed; as is its scrutiny of the role of power elites and interest groups to impose moral ideals and beliefs on other social groups.
6) Employment Week
7) Punishment; governing through crime and social control
This lecture will consider the argument that understandings of crime, criminal behaviour and punishment have been reconfigured over recent years. Assessing Foucault’s seminal disciplinary thesis within the context of wider economic, social and political change, the lecture will focus on ‘risk’, ‘the dispersal of discipline’ and ‘popular punitiveness’; and will critique new governmental and institutional responses to crime and criminal justice.
8) ‘The production of truth’ and ‘the manufacture of consent’
Returning to some of the themes introduced in lecture three, this session explores the reasons for an apparent disconnect between critical criminological thought and criminal justice policy. In doing so, it assesses the extent to which media representations of crime construct particular groups as deviant and dangerous.
9) Left Realism
This lecture assesses the movement which occurred during the 1980s of critical criminological perspectives away from a focus specifically on capitalism and the crimes of the powerful towards street crime and domestic violence committed behind closed doors in economically and socially excluded communities. In particular, it assesses the concept of relative deprivation and the promotion of realist policy responses to crime which prioritise political strategies of social inclusion and support.
10) Critical policy responses
This lecture assesses critical policy responses to crime including the emphasis given to ‘historical materialism’,’ socialism’ and various political strategies of social justice, human rights, social inclusion, community building, and ‘collective efficacy’. It also looks at specific initiatives which aim to dismantle the traditional criminal justice system focusing, for example, onthe radical penal lobby, non-intervention, abolition,restorative justice, and anarchist and peace-making criminology.