Haere mai, and welcome from the teaching staff at Te Puna Haumaru the New Zealand Institute for Security and Crime Science to CRSCI502 - 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 recorded mini-lecture videos, 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!

Learning materials

We draw from a range of media on this NET paper.

Each week there will be 1.5-2 hours of recorded mini-lectures to watch, which are broken down into digestible chunks. These will be embedded within a Moodle 'lesson' which will include short activities and ask you questions that relate to the learning materials (note, these are not assessed!).

You can complete the learning activities at a time that suits you, but this should be within the week (Monday-Sunday) that the topic falls. Students who do not keep up with the pace of the paper will be disadvantaged when it comes to the assessed work, and the tutors may get in touch with students who appear to be falling behind to see if there are obstacles that need support to overcome.

The 2-hour virtual lab sessions will run at a specific time (we will poll you on your preference for this at the beginning of the paper) and you are strongly encouraged to participate in these, as they will help you to develop your crime analysis skills which will be needed for the assessed work.

Contacting paper staff
There are regular opportunities to interact with teaching staff in the 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.

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 textbooks we will be drawing from in this paper are:

• Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis, by Richard Wortley and Michael Townsley, and
• The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Criminology, by Gerben Bruinsma and Shane Johnson

There are copies available through the library (and an online version).

Essential 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).