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Criminology – Unit 1 Controlled Assessment
IT AUDIT
As part of the preparation for Controlled Assessments, teachers may wish to give some thought to how comfortable students are in terms of their familiarity with all things IT.
This is particularly important for the planning and design elements of AC3.1, AC3.2 and AC3.3 where it may sometimes be assumed that students have high level of IT skills when the reality is slightly different.
Poor IT skills can lead to sub-standard work for the Learning Outcome 3 tasks and can also cause students to waste time in the way they handle the different applications online.
One way of checking how good your students are with IT is to use a quick IT audit (see below) and to not assume they are ‘experts’ in all things electronic.
We are constantly surprised by the low levels of IT skills shown by our students and the impact this has on their approach to the controlled assessment.
If teachers undertake a short ‘audit’ early in the course it then becomes easier to drop skills sessions into lessons and to frame homework tasks and independent learning to help develop the required skills.
Striker Midfield Defence McGuire How to use HEADERS in Word How to use FOOTNOTES in Word The difference between ‘save’ and ‘save as’ How to insert an image How to re-size an image How to ‘flow’ text around an image How to underline How to emphasise in bold How to change font How to change font colour How to change font size How to insert a table in a Word doc How to use Word Art How to use Smart Art How to use design software i.e. CANVA How to take a screenshot / snipping tool How to highlight -
Certificate in Criminology (WJEC)
Course handbook and student contract
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Criminology Unit 1 – Learning Outcome 2
Subject dividers / content cards
Learning outcome 2 (LO2) requires students to understand how campaigns are used to elicit change.
There are TWO assessment criteria
AC2.1 – Compare campaigns for change
AC2.2 – Evaluate the effectiveness of media used in campaigns for change
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UK – Summer 2024 Riots
In August 2024, the United Kingdom experienced a wave of far-right protests and riots that spanned various cities, including Southport, London, Manchester, and Belfast.
The unrest occurred from July 30th to August 5th, 2024.
Unrest began in Southport, where protestors attacked Southport Mosque.
False claims circulated by far-right groups suggested that the perpetrator of a mass stabbing on July 29th was a Muslim and an asylum seeker.
The riots included racist attacks, further fueled by broader Islamophobic, racist, and anti-immigrant sentiments that had been growing in the years leading up to the protests.
Rioters engaged in arson and looting, causing significant damage.
These riots were the largest incident of social unrest in England since 2011.
Over 1,000 arrests were made in connection with the unrest, and more than 40 rioters were imprisoned.
At least 69 police officers and 3 police dogs were injured during the clashes.
THINKING ABOUT THE RIOTS
Study the links below and produce a report on the riots. Use the following headings:
- Causes
- Scale / nature of the riots
- Nature of government response
Tuesday 6 August 2024
The Guardian – a UK daily newspaper gives a general overview of the riots
Wednesday 7 August 2024
The BBC summarise the riots so far
22 August 2024
City St George’s sociologist explains how online disinformation, the cost-of-living crisis and nationalism fuelled the riots following Southport tragedy
Channel 4 news report on the riots
Channel 4 news on how the government has responded to the riots
BBC news – riots as terrorism
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wildland
‘Wildland’
A Journey Through a Divided Country
Bloomsbury (2nd ed 2022) pp476 pages
This is a study of the origins and effects of the failure of the mythology of the United States.
The failure, as this book explains, lies more deeply than the grotesque political theatre of Washington but in the peripheries of the country, from the billionaire havens of Greenwich to the exploited towns, cities and rural communities of West Virginia.
This ‘Wildland’, Osnos explains, is less about Trump as the unique creator of the political movement he exists in but is instead a symptom of the deeper movements in US politics and finance where the wealthy have been attempting, for the better part of a century, to create a state where the less government exists the better it would be for the super-rich. In Trump, they found the perfect mouthpiece for this vision, a man capable of convincing the poor, the marginalised and the uneducated that their best interests are the same as those interests of the traders the hedge fund managers.
The book is particularly good on the emptiness and cynicism of Mitch Mconnell (another key Trump enabler) who defies all attempts to uncover what he (Mconnell) truly believes to the point where it is ‘not always easy to remember which fiction he was supposed to expound’.
The heart of the book revolves around the state of West Virginia. Osnos worked here as a cub reporter in 1998 and clearly has strong feelings for the citizens of West Virginia.
In the chapter ‘Jewel in the Hills’ he offers a clear account of how the same forces working to de-regulate and roll back the influence of the state effectively laid waste to whole communities, first through a free-for all in mining licenses and then through later opioid epidemics. JD Vance gets no mention although surely later editions of this book will address this.
As the Democrats gather for their 2024 Convention in Chicago, Osnos is also very good on the racist and racial divides of the city.
In an afterword to this 2022 print, Osnos offers some comfort for a country that seems to be losing its collective mind.
He finds some redemption for this ‘Wildland’ in the grassroots of American politics. He hopes that future administrations may yet return to some notion of a national ‘organised service’ . This need not be purely military (interesting how a similar idea by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was laughed off the front pages during the 2024 general election) but a system of combined and shared experiences: think of JFK’s Peace Corps and Johnson’s Volunteers In Service to America. Reagan Clinton, Bush – all had their version of this shared experience, this shared service.
Only this ‘alchemy’ of incident and instinct can resist the national pressure to ‘conform to tribal constraints’ and would make a good debating point for a group of year 13 A Level Politics students who may well have shared the collective horror of Sunak’s foray into this ‘solution’.
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Anomie
Anomie is a state of normlessness or a breakdown of social norms and values. This concept was introduced by the key sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917).
Anomie occurs when there is a disintegration or disappearance of the norms and values that were previously common to society and helped to bind that society together.
How to recognise anomie
It can exist in a period of dramatic or sudden social change – wars, revolutions, economic crashes etc – when old ideas and norms have been lost or disrupted with nothing replacing them.
Without the old norms and values, what do people cling to? What do they believe in? This may lead to people feeling disconnected from society.
Examples of anomie
A classic example of how anomie can lead to criminal behaviour is found in Robert K. Merton’s Strain Theory. This theory builds on Émile Durkheim’s concept of anomie and explains how societal pressures can lead individuals to engage in deviant behaviour.
During economic recessions, when unemployment rates are high and financial stability is hard to achieve, some individuals may resort to criminal behaviour to support themselves and their families. In this scenario, anomie, by creating a sense of normlessness and disconnection from societal values, can push individuals towards criminal behaviour as a way to cope with the resulting strain.
next – CLASS
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Agency
Agency in sociology refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and make choices that shape their lives and the social structures around them.
Agency emphasizes the idea that individuals are not merely passive recipients of societal influences or structural forces but are active participants who can exercise their will, make decisions, and initiate actions.
Key Points About Agency:
- Individual vs. Collective Agency: Individuals can act independently (individual agency), but they can also collectively influence change (collective agency).
- Structure vs. Agency: a core debate in sociology.Structure refers to the social forces that shape individuals (like social class, gender, race), while agency is the individual’s power to act within these structures.
Examples of Agency:
- Family – Collective Agency: how couples collectively make decisions that affect the family unit. This includes how they communicate, compromise, and come to mutual agreements.
- Crime and deviance – Individual Agency: how young individuals make the decision to join gangs. This might include examining their motivations, such as seeking protection, a sense of belonging, or economic opportunities. It would also look at how they navigate their daily lives within the gang structure.
next – ANOMIE
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21 core concepts for students new to Sociology
In sociology, a concept is a fundamental idea that helps sociologists understand and analyse various aspects of society.
Concepts are the building blocks of sociological theory and research, providing a framework for examining social phenomena and relationships.
As a student of Sociology, these key concepts are central to your understanding of all topics in the subject. It would be a good idea, early in your course, to learn these 20 core concepts and be ready to add to the list as your course progresses.
Key concepts cut-across all areas of sociological study and are central to understanding discussions and debates throughout all areas and themes of a Sociology course.
For example, concepts like class, social structure, culture, norms, and values will be essential to any understanding of the sociology of education.
In a sociological study of crime and deviance, the same concepts will be applied. In using these concepts sociologists attempt decipher patterns in human behaviour and how society is organised.
Concepts allow for a systematic study of how individuals interact within their social environments and how larger social forces shape individual experiences – which is what Sociology is all about.