Crime and Deviance![]() |
More Reviews and Links than you can shake a stick at (although if you do shake that stick in my direction I may have to arrest you) |
| Alcohol, Drugs and Society | Lecture notes (including some interesting video links) from the prolific Robert Keel that look at various aspects of drug use and abuse. Although the evidential focus is on American society there's enough sociological interpretation / analysis here to make this a useful general site for A-level teachers. |
| Bowling For Columbine |
Based
around the
Michael Moore film, the Teacher's Guide section of the site offers a range
of materials on a variety of topics (family, education, media and so forth)
related to the film. In this particular instance, questions about "Terrorism"
are developed through an article, questions and activities designed to get
students thinking about what, when and by whom terrorism can be so labelled.
This activity is, however, merely one small part of the site and a full
Teacher's Guide can be downloaded from the site (or by clicking the picture on
this page). |
| British Journal of Criminology | Not a particularly useful site unless you already subscribe to the Journal. If you're a subscriber, there's articles to download from the journal (which, presumably, you've already got in printed format?) and...err...that's it really. If you're not a subscriber you can view short summaries ("abstracts") of available articles - which may be useful at A-Level since the articles themselves are mainly undergraduate level. |
| Cecil Greek | A crazy name for a crazy guy and it's a bit of a mystery to me as to why I've overlooked this site for so long (unless, of course, I've listed it elsewhere and simply forgotten about it...). There's a load of free on-site materials relating to, amongst other things, crime and the media. A related site provides a range of lecture notes on various theories of deviance (Functionalist, Ecological and Interactionist, among others). These are well-worth perusing and just go to show you shouldn't always beware Greeks bearing gifts (oh dear...). |
| Crime and Deviance | This neat "online learning pack" was originally developed for use with Scottish "Higher level" exams, so there's a good level of convergence between the information and that required at A-level. The online material covers definitions and perspectives on deviance (the latter covering Functionalist, Conflict, Interactionist and Subcultural positions. The fairly sparse on-line material is supplemented by extensive downloadable notes that cover different areas of crime and deviance in greater depth. The pack is rounded-off with a couple of short on-line quizzes and a crossword... |
| Crime Reduction |
![]() Part of the Home Office site, this focuses, as the more astute amongst you may have guessed, on government initiatives to reduce / prevent crime. Teachers and students can find up-to-date material here and the "Crime Reduction Toolkits" are worth having a look at for the information (Official Statistics, British Crime Survey statistics, the fear of crime among many other things) they contain on areas such as rural crime, burglary and vehicle crime. As an added bonus there's a good range of links to a variety of "crime control" web sites. |
| Crime Reduction Toolkits |
This
is part of a the much larger Home Office network of "crime reduction" sites and
it looks at a wide range of different types of crime (from vehicle crime through
people trafficking to the fear of crime)via what they call "crime toolkits".
Although this isn't as grand as it sounds, each "toolkit" does contain some
interesting and useful information - such as facts and figures about a
particular form of crime. The "Fear
of crime" toolkit, for example, examines ideas about why people fear crime,
how people's fear can be measured and so forth. In other words, it's a site that
can be cherry-picked for classroom resources. A related toolkit site (that's not
included here) is
Partnership Working - useful because it focuses on the currently-fashionable
(in crime-reduction circles) "criminal audits"; if you want to know more about
these then this site gives you a useful general introduction. |
| Crimestoppers UK | An "Independent charity" site that specialises in passing-on anonymous information about crime to the police. As such it raises interesting questions about areas of crime - the ethics and effectiveness of this type of "crime prevention" and so forth - that can be used as the focus of classroom debate about a multitude of crime-related topics (plus, there's the added bonus of being able to check to see if any of your students feature in the "Most Wanted" category). |
| Criminology Interactive |
This is a bit of a weird one in the sense that it's something put-out by a major
American publisher (Pearson), refers to an "interactive disk" and looks / sounds
like something for which
you're expected to pay - yet here it is on the web
in all its glorious freeness. Be
that as it may, the "Interactive Experience" is designed to teach you about
criminology and to do this it uses a big wodge of video (of the cheapo variety -
Professors on sofas talking about things. This is generally okay but it gets a
bit repetitive and ever-so-slightly dull after a while), plus assorted web pages (a kind of extended
reading) and interactive tests and games - which mainly seem to be variations on
drag-and-drop). This whole thing is interesting but probably flawed - the
interface is over-complicated for what's on offer (but on the other hand if it's
free - at least for the moment - why not give it a try?). |
| Home Office | If you're searching for UK crime statistics, this is the obvious place to start. There's a range of statistics available - including both the latest official crime variety and the British Crime Survey results. The latter, for example, can be downloaded (in Adobe pdf format) and is an incredibly-useful 100-page summary of the latest BCS findings. The site also breaks crime statistics down into various smaller categories (violence, theft, etc.) and contains a number of helpful links to other crime-related sites. |
| Jock Young |
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| John Lea |
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| Libertarianism | An American (what else?) site extolling the joys of "small government, militant individualism and the right to shoot people dead if they look at you in a funny way" (I made that last bit up). If you're looking to introduce New Right ideas about such things as decriminalisation, freedom of speech and the relationship between the State and the Individual, the "Government Doesn't Work: A Lesson in Libertarianism" essay might be helpful in bringing the topic to life (or death). There's also a short piece on "social deviance" that's probably worth a bit of discussion. |
| Sociological Theories of Deviance | In basic terms, this site offers a range of notes on a variety of theories of deviance (from Classical sociology to Radical Criminology and all points in between...). The notes aren't particularly extensive (probably because they're designed to be...err...notes) but they are useful for A-level students, even though the basic level is aimed at American University students (I would guess). |
| Theories of Criminal Behaviour | A useful chart of different theories of criminal behaviour (both sociological - labelling, Subcultural, differential association and so forth) and non-sociological (genetic and psychoanalytic, for example) hyperlinked to brief notes about each theory. The site seems incomplete and one or two of the links are inactive but, in the main, there's enough here to make a visit worthwhile. |
| The Sociology of Deviance | Another site from the prolific Robert Keel which aims to provide a basic Introduction to the sociology of deviance. At root, the site consists of a set of notes that focus on the questions "What is deviance?" and "Who are deviants?". The notes contain a number of hyperlinks that take you to more in-depth analyses, but overall the notes are probably aimed at a slightly higher level than AS / A2. |
| Youth Subcultures |
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| British Studies Web |
![]() The British Studies Web is a nice resource for a range of materials relating to social life in GB. This section, however, focuses on youth culture and fashion and contains a variety of reasonably short articles that could be used as background and / or stimulus material in the classroom. |
| Gangs | The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) site has a number of articles available (in both html and pdf formats) relating to gangs and gang behaviour (to be viewed on-line or downloaded). Although the focus is mainly on American gang behaviour there's a lot of useful material here for both students and teachers (although you may want to edit the material for classroom use since it's pretty extensive...). |
| Gangs in LA County |
Massive amount of
information (text, pictures, video and sound files) about all aspects of gang
behaviour in Los Angeles. Worth a look if you're researching subcultural / gang
behaviour but be warned - there's a lot of material to wade through... |