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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.

Excluded: CRIM3011, JURD7503

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. The knowledge of theoretical and practical developments will be applied to specific local contexts and the major Research Assignment is directed to this end. The course introduces students to theories and practices of crime prevention and should be of particular interest to people wishing to develop greater knowledge of criminology and criminal justice.

Patrick Shepherdson has an extensive background as a crime prevention and community safety researcher and strategist. As the former Assistant Director, Crime Prevention Division, with (the former) NSW Attorney Generals Department, Patrick was responsible for the legislatively based NSW crime prevention planning and funding program. He established the statewide $1 million Aboriginal Community Patrols youth outreach program, managed a range of targeted social and situational crime prevention strategies and was also responsible for the Division’s crime prevention research and evaluation team.

Main topics:

  • Space, geography and the city
  • The emergence of fear of crime as a criminological object
  • The rise of risk, marketing and technology
  • Different theories of and approaches to crime prevention
  • Crime prevention in rural areas and or Aboriginal communities
  • Local government and crime prevention plans
  • The politics of crime prevention


LLM Specialisation

Recommended Prior Knowledge

Criminal Law 1 and 2 or their equivalent.

Course Aims

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.

Learning Outcomes

At the conclusion of this course, students should be able to:
  1. Critically examine approaches to crime prevention
  2. Employ various theoretical approaches to analysing crime prevention
  3. Apply knowledge and theory about crime prevention to contemporary crime problems
  4. Prepare a crime prevention assessment of a particular site
  5. Undertake research based on inter-disciplinary sources
  6. Demonstrate effective written communication skills by articulating crime prevention concepts clearly, persuasively and appropriately;
  7. Demonstrate effective oral communication skills by discussing and debating course concepts in a scholarly, reflective and respectful manner

Assessment

 
Class participation 20%
Short Essay
25%
Major Essay
55%

Law Books

Study Levels

Undergraduate Study Postgraudate Study Postgraduate Research Study Non-Award Study

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