SP477      Half Unit
Crime, Justice & Social Policy

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

The course provides a detailed and critical foundation in the study of crime and criminal justice, through a focus on some of its constitutive ideas, institutions, practices, and participants. Lectures in the first half of term provide an overview of a criminological understanding of crime and deviance. Lectures in the second half of term provide an overview of a criminological understanding of justice policy. Throughout the course, particular emphasis is devoted to the historical, conceptual, and theoretical traditions that make up — and subvert — criminology’s canon.

Please Note: MSc Criminal Justice Policy Students MUST pass SP477 AS WELL AS the Dissertation (SP498) to graduate. This applies to students commencing the Programmes from Academic year 2025/26 onwards.

15 hours of seminars and 15 hours of lectures in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

All teaching will be in accordance with the LSE Academic Code which specifies a minimum of two hours taught contact time per week when the course is running in the Autumn Term (AT) and/or Winter Term (WT). Social Policy courses are predominantly taught through a combination of in-person lectures and In person classes/seminars. Further information will be provided by the Course Convenor in the first lecture of the course.

Short answer questions

Students will be expected to answer a set of broad questions every week, which will be similar to the summative exam questions and related to the lecture and seminar material covered in that week.

• Christie, N. (1977). Conflicts as property. British Journal of Criminology, 1-15.
• Liebling, A., Maruna, S., & McAra, L. (Eds.). (2023). The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 7th ed. Oxford University Press.
• Newburn, T. (2017). Criminology, 3rd ed. Routledge.
• Newburn, T. (Ed.). (2009). Key Readings in Criminology. Willan Publishing.
• Phillips, C., Earle, R., Parmar, A., & Smith, D. (2020). Dear British criminology: Where has all the race and racism gone?. Theoretical Criminology, 24(3), 427-446.
• Zedner, L. (2004). Criminal justice. Oxford University Press.

Exam (100%), duration: 210 Minutes in the Spring exam period

Assessment is a final Online Assessment comprising questions of varying length that test mastery of the concepts and issues covered throughout the course, duration 3.5 hours.