Explore the complexities of the sex industry, and related criminological issues and policy. This module will consider both the motivations of those who purchase sexual services and the diverse reasons why individuals are involved in the provision of sexual services. You'll identify the cultural factors which impact on this global industry and the nature and extent of crime and victimisation in indoor and outdoor sex work. This module will also address theoretical understandings of sex work/prostitution, their influences, and the way they impact on the way the industry is controlled. This will include law and policy in Britain and internationally. You'll also understand how these policies impact on sex workers and communities.
Conduct a critical, sociological exploration of the prison - more specifically, the experience of imprisonment. You will deal with concepts such as time and liminality, renegotiations of identity and masculinities, coping, and negotiations of gender to unpack the implications of being in the prison environment on individual prisoners.
This module examines the relationship between sport, crime, and social justice. It explores how behaviours and decisions within the world of sport can sometimes contradict wider social norms or legal standards. You'll investigate the politicisation of sports, considering how it can act as both a tool for social mobility and a site of inequality. The module also explores how race, gender, and class shape sporting experiences – both for participants and spectators.
Study the historical and socially constructed nature of freedom, crime and criminality within the law. You will look at examples of social movements that illuminate how the law itself is a field of contestation, including piracy, file sharing and poll tax rebellion.
By encouraging you to reflect on learning acquired through work placements, this module aims to promote self-awareness of your 'career story'. You'll look at how you evaluate your current skills, explore future possibilities in your career development and navigate pathways through those chosen possibilities. In short, this module enables you to become a 'cartographer' of your own future. You'll embark on at least 80 hours of work placements, supported by reflective exercises. Build expertise and confidence through a range of assessments designed by your course team and our employer partners.
Explore key concepts, topics, and debates in the study of resistance to state harms across the domains of rights, welfare, and criminal justice. Drawing on contributions from scholars and activists at the forefront of campaigning, you'll examine resistance movements in areas such as welfare reform, policing, gender-based violence, social housing, prison expansion, and asylum and refugee support. By the end of the module, you'll have developed a critical understanding of activism and resistance, along with a set of transferable skills relevant to careers in the third sector. These could include roles in charities, campaigning organisations, research bodies, and welfare services.
Look into competing explanations for acts of violent and sexual offending in both domestic and institutional settings, touching on gender, ethnicity and age issues.
Explore different theoretical approaches to understanding masculinities, including social construction and develop your ability to relate these theoretical approaches to a range of empirical topics.
Explore the development of the British welfare state and examine it in terms of the divisions between public and private provision and the conflicting moral judgements that are applied. The ways in which these State interventions build upon and entrench class divisions are studied.
Develop your understanding of the nature of work and organisations in the contemporary global economy. You will build the critical skills needed to understand key theoretical debates regarding new organisational and work-management techniques, new and emerging forms of labour and employment, and the complex and changing relationship between production, consumption and identity in an increasingly globalised economy.
Explore how our identities, so often presented as a natural and eternal condition, are constructed for us by powerful forces of reproduction and representation, ones that blur the lines between fabricated and real, object and subject, outside and inside, in a process which at once helps to maintain social hierarchy and is largely beyond individual control.
Engage with the practice of sociology in a real world context through a period of work-based learning. You'll gain practical experience of a professional work area related to your course.
In this module, you'll explore different explanations for gendered violence, with a particular focus on domestic violence. You'll consider how factors like gender, age, ethnicity, and sexuality shape both people's experiences of violence and the ways it is addressed. Key themes include physical, psychological, and sexual violence; the role of the police and criminal justice system; and domestic homicide. You'll also look at so-called 'honour'-based violence, perpetrator programmes, and how different services work together through multi-agency responses to prevent and respond to abuse.
Look at the cultural and social relationship between tattoos and crime, including the symbolism of tattooing and criminal identity.
Examine various aspects associated with sexual offending and sex offenders as you engage with key academic literature and policy documents. This module will introduce you to current sexual offences legislation in England and Wales. You'll review and reflect on the representations of sexual offending and sex offenders across a variety of media formats. You'll also assess responses to the 'sex offender problem'. Additionally, the module will critique the supervision and management efforts implemented specifically for sex offenders, in England and Wales as well as in other jurisdictions.
In this module, you'll explore the relationship between housing and crime, taking a deep dive into how the individual home can become a site of victimisation and harm. You'll critically examine how housing – or the lack of – can expose individuals, organisations, and larger state actors. Using a critical, intersectional lens, you'll investigate topics such as social housing, homelessness, domestic abuse, housing disasters, and other contemporary issues within the fields of housing and criminology.
Gain a critical understanding of the lived experiences of individuals who are seeking support to stop offending and recover from substance abuse. You’ll explore the connections between theory, policy and practice, in order to support desistance and recovery, to reduce reoffending and improve resettlement.
Critically examine terrorism, policing and security from an interdisciplinary perspective. You will analyse how terrorism, policing and security have emerged as political and law enforcement priorities and analyse the impact this has had in the respective areas of human rights, civil liberties and the criminalisation of particular groups in society. You will be equipped with the ability to think independently and critically about terrorism, policing and security while at the same time challenging orthodox understandings of the subject matter.
This module offers criminological and criminal psychological insights into violent offences that are unique, grotesque, and shocking in nature. You'll delve into these crimes from multiple perspectives, exploring psychosocial and criminological explanations that seek to uncover their disturbing root causes. Finally, you'll critically evaluate domestic and international criminal justice responses to these extraordinary crimes, scrutinising preventive policies, investigative techniques, sentencing, and rehabilitation strategies.