Haere mai, and welcome from the teaching staff at Te Puna Haumaru the New Zealand Institute for Security and Crime Science to CRSCI201 - Understanding Crime Events.

The focus of this paper is on crime as a potentially preventable event. Crimes occur in a patterned way that is partly determined by situational factors and people's decision-making. Understanding how crime is patterned can involve many techniques to reveal the concentration of crime along different dimensions, such as time, space, people, products and offenders. This paper introduces students to theories that help explain these patterns and showcases some key techniques that are used to understand patterns in crime events. These include crime scripts, crime mapping and spatial analysis and repeat victimization.

The paper is designed so that theory and application are interspersed. In the first weeks in this paper we will introduce you to major theoretical perspectives on understanding crime events and the factors that contribute to why particular types of crime happen when and where they do (and not at other times or places). The application weeks will showcase crime analysis techniques that build on the theories so you can see how they work when interpreting crime patterns in data. Students will get to develop their understanding of crime data in the computer-based labs by learning the basics of performing some key crime analysis techniques. The final week is set aside for recapping and revising for the exam.

These topics will be covered via interactive workshops, labs, reading activities on Perusall, and other interesting and fun resources will be provided via Moodle. We hope you enjoy learning from this paper and look at crime in a different way when you finish it!

Paper structure

This paper is taught using an innovative 'flipped classroom' approach, meaning there will be no traditional lectures. In the first week of class, you can choose whether you would like to access each week's learning material by either:
a) Watching a selection of short, online pre-workshop videos [1 hour], and attending an in-person workshop on the Hamilton campus [1.5-2 hours], or
b) Completing an online interactive lesson [2.5-3 hours].

You can also choose whether you would like to attend lab classes, which cover crime analysis skills development, by either:
a) Coming to a weekly in-person lab on the Hamilton campus [1 hour], or
b) Joining a weekly online lab on zoom [1 hour].

Please note that these choices are independent of each other, so you can choose to study fully online, fully in-person or a combination of the two that suits you. To preserve student privacy, in-person workshops, in-person lab classes, and online lab classes will not be recorded. If you wish to switch your choice for a particular week (e.g., if you are ill and would rather study online), please contact the teaching assistant via the Private Help Forum who can then make a different area of Moodle available to you.

In addition to the above, most weeks all students will complete an interactive online reading activity and work towards completing a lab activity. There will be an end of paper test in study week after the paper concludes.

Contacting paper staff
There are regular opportunities to interact with teaching staff in the workshops, labs, and during office hours by appointment.

Students can contact paper staff with specific questions through the Private Help forum on Moodle. The Private Help Forum is the preferred method of communication, and you can expect a response within two working days Monday-Friday. Messages sent in the evenings or weekends will not be answered until the next working day. Please do not email paper staff as this is not a quick way to receive a response.

Most student questions can be answered by consulting this paper outline, and the Pānui (Announcements) forum on Moodle. As becoming an independent learner is a fundamental part of your time at university we strongly encourage you to use your initiative when seeking information relating to this paper. To help you to develop this independence, if you ask a question about information that has already been shared about the paper, we will delay our response in getting back to you to give you the chance to answer your own question. Specific questions from students that are not readily answerable with information already shared will be answered within two working days.

Important updates and reminders will disseminated via the Pānui (Announcements) forum on Moodle. It is the student’s responsibility to check this and their emails regularly (at least twice a week). If information is posted on Moodle it will be assumed that all students have received this information.When you log on to Moodle for the first time, please go to your “profile” and check your contact details are correct. This is the information we will use if we need to contact you, so it is your responsibility to ensure these details are up to date at all times.

Feedback

After provisional assessment grades have been released, the paper staff will post general feedback on the Pānui (Announcements) forum. Students will also receive a detailed feedback form in the mid-trimester teaching recess that overviews their performance in specific areas covered in the first half of the paper, to enable the student to plan where to direct their energies for the second half of the paper. Students can contact paper staff with specific questions about their assessment grades through the private help forum on Moodle.

The textbook for this paper is Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis, by Richard Wortley and Michael Townsley. There are copies available through the library (and an online version).

Required and recommended readings will be accessible in reading activities in Perusall (which can be accessed through Moodle), and in the Talis Aspire reading list (also linked on Moodle).