Welcome to your Criminology and Criminal Justice course

A hybrid learning approach has been adopted for this programme. This means students will have chosen whether to study on campus or via distance learning. This way of learning has been designed so you can tailor study around your personal needs. In practice, if you’re an on-campus student, you will be expected to join timetabled sessions on the university campus. In exceptional circumstances (e.g. to illness etc), you can join timetabled sessions synchronously (live) but will be expected to return to attending on campus study. If you have chosen to study via distance learning. You have one of two options, we make it possible for you to join us synchronously (live) during timetabled sessions – you will need a good wifi connection. You will join sessions online via Blackboard Collaborate. Students get a lot out of joining the ‘live’ sessions. If due to personal circumstances, you will study at a distance, (asynchronously) it is mandatory that you watch all the recorded lectures/seminar/workshop discussions and complete the activities. You must engage with your course material on a weekly basis. Students who do not engage with their course materials generally perform poorly in their coursework. Learning is delivered over a single day each week on campus (usually but not guaranteed, on a Friday).

Lectures are where the team deliver a talk for about 50 minutes- an hour about a particular topic. Seminars, tutorials and workshops are about 50 minutes- an hour long and allow for cohort discussions, completion of activities to consolidate learning from the lecture.

Teaching team hold Academic Support Time each week, usually held after the timetabled sessions. Academic support is where you can have one to one or small group discussions about the weekly topic, coursework or other issues influencing your studies.

As part of the programme, you will complete one of two option modules. One option is the placement module which gives experience in a particular sector or profession (and less lecture time so you can do your placement). The other option available is Leadership, that ensures learners leave the module with potential skills and abilities in leadership that can be applied to various social and criminal justice contexts.

Students selecting to study the full time one year route are advised to take note that each 40- credit module comes with 400 hours of study and each 20- credit module has 200 hours of study allocated. Some of these hours are for weekly taught sessions. (Around 26 hours per module will be contact with the teaching team). It is worth noting the number of hours individual learners are expected to invest in their own independent study in order to accomplish a good overall experience of postgraduate study. We strongly encourage you to not to attempt to combine full time postgraduate study AND try and maintain full time paid employment.

It might be good to know that we have a two- year continuous part- time programme that learners might find easier to manage alongside demanding, paid work.

If you have any questions about this or anything else described above, please contact the course leader Arta Jalilli-Idriss, arta.jaliliidrissi@staffs.ac.uk or Lauren Metcalfe lauren.metcalfe@staffs.ac.uk. 

1.   1. Read the news

   In Criminology, we are often referring to articles, news stories and journalists in the media so it is crucial to stay up to date. This is simple: spend a few minutes a day looking through the stories and reading anything that seems relevant (for example, policy changes, crime news, investigations or events). When you see a news story that is particularly controversial, it is a great idea to research other news websites to see different perspectives of the same story (e.g. BBC vs The Guardian vs The Times) and note the differences and similarities – for example, how they perceive the offender or victim or how they explain a crime or policy change. This will be useful and a great habit to develop, as you will be doing this throughout the programme.

   2. Watch and listen to the News

   Newsnight and Channel 4 news are probably the best to watch but try and look at a range of different news channels and think about their different focus and framing of stories and why this could be the case. But more importantly, just about everyone who is senior in the Ministry of Justice, Home Office and academia starts the day with the BBC Today programme, as it is regarded as the important place where debate and policy is played out. Indeed, listening to the News and BBC radio 4 is really advisable, as there are a great deal of specialist programmes that are often relevant, some stand alone and one off, some repeated, such as Laurie Taylor’s long term show Thinking Allowed, but also the Moral Maze, All in the Mind and Women’s hour.

   3. Podcasts

   We have Crime Tapes as our Staffordshire University podcast, but there is a wealth of great true crime podcasts out there covering everything crime related you could ever imagine. Some are more subject tied like Conversations with Criminologists or the University of Oxford's podcast.

2. 4. Netflix and BBC IPlayer
3. Yes, Netflix is a goldmine, and parts of Criminology (believe it or not) are so trendy that they deal with cultural products and news media. Some very high-profile Criminologists such as Yvonne Jewkes, Keith Hayward, Jeff Ferrell, Chris Greer and David Wilson have said quite a bit on media representations of crime, and Netflix has some great shows: Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, Tiger King, Don't F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer, The Staircase, Making a Murderer, The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, Amanda Knox.  Fictional representations can be good too, especially those looking at crime. The Wire, the Walking Dead and the Sopranos have been much discussed by Criminologists, as have programmes like the Shield, but programmes like the BBC 2 Cops Like Us shows officers from Staffordshire police, including some at our University, and they describe with brutal honesty the everyday challenges of policing in a climate of cuts and changing crime in the area, which makes it very relevant to us. You can also watch Jimmy McGovern’s three-part docu-drama Time featuring Stephen Graham and Sean Bean. 
4. 5. Browse the library

   It is never too early to get prepared. Get into your local library or your nearest city library (or even a university library if you have one close by) and look at the Criminology section. Take some time reading around Criminological theories, case studies, different types of crime, the media and the Criminal Justice System. You may feel overwhelmed by how much information is out there but there is no harm in getting used to the different types of textbooks. We suggest you do not buy textbooks or if you do, only get second-hand ones, before you start but as a primer Treadwell’s book Criminology is a good introductory and basic overview.

5. 6. Specific reading

   Please do not buy new and expensive textbooks before you arrive as the reading lists can change each year. However, it is a good idea to check out general Criminology textbooks that cover everything especially if they can be bought on eBay at a low cost (see below for some suggestions). Sometimes older editions remain useful, they certainly paint a picture of what the concerns of the time where when they were published, but as well as specialist texts we recommend some other introductions. James Treadwell and Adam Lynes 50 Facts Everyone Should Know About Crime and Punishment in Britain is a really accessible and readable text on the Criminal Justice System of England and Wales and contains some interesting facts that you may not know about how criminal justice operates.

   You could try reading some seminal True Crime, for example In Cold Blood is a non-fiction novel by American author Truman Capote, first published in 1966 which details the 1959 murders of four members of the Herbert Clutter family in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas features as an episode of Crime Tapes and is regarded as a classic in the genre. Books like The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold, A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa by A T Williams, or Injustice: Life and Death in the Courtrooms of America by Clive Stafford Smith are probably more useful than other True Crime authors/books.

   However, Criminology is a wide-ranging subject and there is never really a shortage of reading. Most Criminologists read continuously and read a lot for pleasure, and good quality journalism on crime like for example Blake Morrison’s As if, Gita Sereny’s Cries Unheard. These are not academic texts as such but are well worth reading.

   The contemporary moment also means that Gary Younge, ‘Another Day in the Death of America’, Akala’s, ‘Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire’, Asne Seierstad’s ‘One of Us: The Story of a Massacre and its Aftermath’ David Simon’s ‘Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets’ or (with Ed Burns) The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighbourhood or Kester Apsden’s Nationality: Wog: The Hounding of David Oluwale.

   Finally, we still highly rate Noel Smith’s autobiography A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun: The Autobiography of a Career Criminal.

   Here are some very good academic textbooks, the first two of which are considered the ‘bibles’ of Criminology and would be good if you are new to Criminology.

   • Newburn, T. (2017) Criminology. 3rd ed., London: Routledge.
   • Liebling, A., Maruna, S. & McAra, L. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. 6 edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (See the chapter on Criminological theory in particular).
   • Hall, S. & Winlow, S. (2012) New Directions in Criminological Theory. London: Routledge.
   • McLaughlin, E. & Muncie, J. (2013) Criminological Perspectives: Essential Readings. 3rd ed., London: Sage.
   • All of these can be bought second hand if you do decide to buy, and we encourage you to do this (especially the first two as they are expensive). We certainly do not expect everyone to buy and read all the above.

   7. Find your interest!

Finally, through all this preparation and reading you may figure out where your interest lies. For example, is your interest in youth crime, violent crime, international and corporate crime, Green Criminology or perhaps Sports Criminology? Are you interested in the Courts, Police, Prisons or Probation? This sort of early preparation can be useful to get you thinking early about your final dissertation project and, while you do not need to think too much about that yet, having some ideas can help.

The Staffordshire University Crime and Society Research Group (SUC&SRG) provides an opportunity for students to join academics in conducting research that contributes to creating a more equitable and inclusive society.

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