Criminal law has multiple purposes: to protect people, to punish wrongdoers, to deter future crimes, to reward conformity, to discourage deviance, and to shape political, social, and economic outcomes. A country’s laws about crime reflect the choices that country has made about how to try to regulate or control its citizens. Criminology is the academic study of crime, how it is defined, attempts to control it, and attitudes towards crime.

This paper makes use of a range of key concepts, arguments, and theories from sociology and criminology to investigate, analyse, and reflect on several contemporary issues in crime and justice. The paper is comparative in scope. All issues discussed are relevant to New Zealand, but also reflect on-going topical debates in many countries around the world.

STRUCTURE
This paper examines five topics in five weeks. Topic 1 is a prologue that reviews and discusses key concepts, theories, and tools that students can use as a framework for the analysis of policy issues in sociology or criminology. Topics 2 to 5 are then each devoted to examining one specific contemporary issue in crime and justice. The analysis of each issue considers empirical evidence about the nature of the issue (from New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and elsewhere), examines key actors involved and their arguments, discusses relevant concepts and theories, and evaluates causes, factors, and reforms or solutions.

Topic 1: Prologue: Tools for issue analysis
Topic 2: Police violence and misbehaviour toward the public, in comparative perspective
Topic 3: Ram raids: Media frenzy, youth crime, and social media
Topic 4: Abortion: Women, power, and criminalisation
Topic 5: Prison abolition and reform: is the decarceration movement feasible or utopian

WORKLOAD
As a summer course, SOCIO311-23G condenses a full paper into a five week period in November and December. It is very important that students devote sufficient time to undertaking the course as it unfolds, such as by staying on top of the readings and lectures on a weekly basis. In a summer course, there is not going to be time to catch up later. Students need to engage consistently from start to finish, if their goal is to do well in the course.

LECTURES
On Mondays through Thursdays each week, one short lecture video is posted per day to the Panopto section on the course website in Moodle. There will be approximately two hours of lecture content per week, divided up across four videos. A lecture schedule for the semester is available on Moodle.

TUTORIALS
A one-hour tutorial is held every week using Zoom. This will take place at a time chosen by students in an online poll on Moodle shortly before the summer period begins. Participation in tutorials will help students to understand the content of lectures and readings, and in particular help students identify key points and questions they should focus upon. The best way to prepare for the test is to participate in tutorials.

A sample of relevant readings has been provided above in the schedule for each topic, to give examples of the kind of material discussed and examined.

The list of required and optional readings for SOCIO311-23G will be finalized at the start of summer semester. All readings are identified and provided in Moodle as PDFs or linked to from Moodle, organised by topic.