Dr Leonidas Cheliotis

This course is available on the MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice Policy, MSc in International Social and Public Policy, MSc in International Social and Public Policy (Development), MSc in International Social and Public Policy (Education), MSc in International Social and Public Policy (LSE and Fudan), MSc in International Social and Public Policy (Migration), MSc in International Social and Public Policy (Non-Governmental Organisations) and MSc in International Social and Public Policy (Research). This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

The course content derives from a long expressed desire among students to tackle 'real-time' current issues in the classroom. This has hitherto been approached through integrating visual and textual material from media sites, political commentaries, and the like, into existing courses. The ambition of this course is to go further and to situate and analyse key questions of our age within multiple and wide-ranging disciplinary perspectives. Intellectually, this reflects the opportunities that arise within criminology as a 'rendezvous subject' that facilitates and promotes the exchange of ideas and the expression of diverse academic interests (Downes 1988).

The course will offer students insights into key questions of our time that animate political and public debate but from several informed scholarly frames of reference. Additionally, each year there will be built-in flexibility to introduce 1-2 current concerns/questions that have yet to be identified or posed. An indicative list of provocative questions for consideration include:

1. Is crime an inevitability given global, national and local socio-economic inequalities?
2. What should the age of criminal responsibility be?
3. Is media coverage of crime anti-democratic?
4. Should the criminal justice system be used to punish hate?
5. How should society deal with sex offenders?
6. Is political corruption unavoidable?
7. What can criminology bring to understanding and responding to war and military conflicts?
8. Should women’s prisons be abolished? Should all prisons?
9. Can AI in criminal justice settings be used with legitimacy?
10. Are genetics the future of crime control?
11. Is it time to arm the British police?

To provide more detail on the pedagogical approach to be taken, we illustrate here with three examples:

1. Is crime an inevitability given global, national and local socio-economic inequalities? This can be examined from conceptual and theoretical literature in anthropology, behviourialism, criminology, economics, gender studies, geography, philosophy, social psychology, political economy, and sociology.

2. Can AI in criminal justice settings be used with legitimacy? For this, students can be exposed to material from within criminology, critical race studies, history, law, philosophy, social psychology and sociology.

3. Are genetics the future of crime control? Here sources could be drawn from biomedical science, ethics, developmental psychology, gender studies, law and sociology.

These are indicative possibilities and we do not envisage that all of the perspectives be introduced for any given criminological controversy!

30 hours of workshops in the Winter Term.

Atalas, S. (1968) The Sociology of Corruption: The Nature, Function, Causes and Prevention of Corruption. Singapore: David Moore Press Ltd.

Benjamin, R. (2019) Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. London: Polity.

Cormaroff, J. and Cormaroff, J. (2016) The Truth about Crime: Sovereignty, Knowledge, Social Order. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Currie, E. (2015) The Roots of Danger: Violent Crime in Global Perspective. Oxford: OUP.

Davis, A. (2003) Are Prisons Obsolete? New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.

Hagan, J., & Rymond-Richmond, W. (2009) 'Criminology Confronts Genocide: whose side are you on?', Theoretical Criminology, 13(4): 503-511.

Hall S, Critcher C, Jefferson T, et al. (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order. London: Macmillan.

Kauppinen, A. (2015) 'Hate and Punishment', Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 30(10): 1719-1737. 

Roach, J. and Pease, K. (2018) Evolution and Crime. London: Routledge.

Walklate, S. and McGarry, R. (2015) Criminology and War: Transgressing the Borders. London: Routledge.

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Benjamin, R. (2024) Imagination: A Manifesto. New York, NY: W. Norton & Company.

Brown, A., and Charles, A. (2021) 'The Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility: The Need for a Holistic Approach' , Youth Justice, 21(2): 153-171.

Brown, W. (2015) In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Chakraborti, N. (2016) 'Mind the Gap! Making Stronger Connections Between Hate Crime Policy and Scholarship', Criminal Justice Policy Review, 27(6): 577-589.

Farrell, S. and Karstedt, S. (2020) Respectable Citizens - Shady Practices: The Economic Morality of the Middle Classes. Oxford: OUP.

Greer, C. (ed.) (2009) Media and Crime: A Reader. London: Routledge.

Palacios, L. (2020) 'Challenging Convictions: Indigenous and Black race-radical feminists theorizing the carceral state and abolitionist praxis in the United States and Canada', Meridians 19(S1): 522-547.

Rodriguez, S.M. (2022) 'African Feminisms for Abolitionist Futures: archival hauntings in a speculative geography', Agenda 36(4): 29-39.

Zimring, F. and Johnson, D. (2005) 'On the Comparative Study of Corruption' British Journal of Criminology, 45(6): 793–809.

Project (100%, 3000 words).

The assessment will comprise

• a 3000-word Policy Brief for a Minister to use in a parliamentary debate that includes Academic Literature, Parliamnetary Question(s), Policy Implications and Lines To Take sections. Due in Week 1 of the following term (100% summative).