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Course

Crime Prevention Policy - LAWS8103

Faculty: Faculty of Law

School: Faculty of Law

Course Outline: See below

Campus: Sydney

Career: Postgraduate

Units of Credit: 6

EFTSL: 0.12500 (more info)

Indicative Contact Hours per Week: 2

Enrolment Requirements:

Pre-requisite: Academic Program must be 9200 or 9210 or 9230 or 5740 or 9285 or 5285 or 9220 or 5750.

CSS Contribution Charge: 1 (more info)

Tuition Fee: See Tuition Fee Schedule

Further Information: See Class Timetable

View course information for previous years.

Description

Crime Prevention policy is a criminological course which aims to introduce students to central concepts and issues in the emerging crime prevention literature and practice. The course is socio-legal in orientation, although there is scope for discussion of legal regimes in relation to specific topics. An attempt will be made to apply the knowledge of theoretical and practical developments to specific local contexts and the major Research Assignment is directed to this end.


LLM Specialisation

Recommended Prior Knowledge

Criminal Law 1 and 2 or their equivalent.

Course Objectives

There have been considerable developments in the field of crime prevention policy in recent years as the limitations of over-reliance on the criminal justice agencies become apparent. A renewed interest in the concepts of space and locality have led to the development of situational and social crime prevention in the USA, UK and western European countries, and to a lesser but increasing extent, Australia. Previous criminological work in an ecological tradition has been revived. Links are being forged across traditional disciplinary boundaries, for example geography, urban sociology, town planning and criminology. A primary objective of this course is to examine these developments.

A subsidiary objective is to foster a range of approaches to socio-legal scholarship. There will be a strong emphasis on inter-disciplinary approaches. Students will be required to complete a piece of applied research, a Crime Prevention Assessment of a particular site.

Main Topics

  • Space, geography and the city
  • The emergence of fear of crime as a criminological object
  • The rise of risk, marketing and technology
  • Crime prevention in rural areas
  • The Chicago ecological tradition
  • Situational crime prevention
  • Social crime prevention
  • The 'broken windows' debate and zero tolerance
  • Defensible space
  • Early childhood intervention
  • Local government and crime prevention plans
  • Housing and disadvantage; alcohol, violence and licensed premises
  • Drugs and crime
  • Youth and crime prevention
  • Crime prevention in Indigenous communities
  • Recidivism and desistance
  • The politics of crime prevention

Assessment

Class participation (inc. Leading discussion on one reading) 10%
Short Essay (1,500 words) 25%
Major Essay (4,000 words) 65%

Course Texts

The course will be based on a set of readings prepared by the teacher.

Recommended
Welsh, B. and Farrington, D. (eds) (2012) Oxford Handbook of Crime Prevention, Oxford University Press, Oxford. (Note that this is a very expensive book – consider this before ordering)

Nick Tilley Crime Prevention, Willan Publishing (2009)

Sutton, A.; Cherney, A. and White, R. (2008)Crime Prevention - Principles, Perspectives and Practices, Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne.

Gordon Hughes The Politics of Crime and Community (2007)
Law Books

Study Levels

Undergraduate Study Postgraudate Study Postgraduate Research Study Non-Award Study

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