More Crime and Deviance Resources

Following on from the previous set of crime resources, this is a mixed-bag of PowerPoint Presentations and Word documents covering various aspects of crime and deviance.

While there is coverage of various issues and debates here, the main emphasis is on student activities and tasks – and while there’s nothing particularly spectacular or cutting-edge about the various resources there may be something here you’ll find helpful or inspiring.

PowerPoint Presentations

Crime and Deviance explores what sociologists mean by crime and deviance, why some crimes are not seen as deviant, the relatively of crime and deviance and how deviancy can be created. An accompanying worksheet can be used in conjunction with the Presentation.

Deviance Stimulus Items uses a wide range of stimulus cues to explore different aspects of crime and deviance.

Crime or Deviance? Another introductory Presentation that looks at the difference between crime and deviance.

Crime Rates: Basic Presentation focused around how crime rates are formed and why official crime figures should be questioned.

Measuring Crime: A lengthy Presentation that looks at some of the ways official crime statistics are (socially) constructed and how the dark figure of crime is measured through self-report and victim studies.

Functionalism: Quite a long (34-slide) Presentation, with a bit on Durkheim, a lot on Merton and a little on Hirschi that builds towards helping students construct an essay answer on Functionalism and Crime. Includes some YouTube video on the “Manchester Riots” (no, me neither).

Moral Panics: Introduction to the concept of moral panics using Cohen’s classic study. The Presentation includes a number of tasks for students focused on the role of the media in the generation of moral panics.

Social Order and Social Control looks at consensus and conflict views on social order, formal and informal social controls and deviancy amplification. The Presentation includes a range of tasks designed to consolidate understanding.

Social Control Agencies: Presentation covering formal and informal social control – how they work and why they are needed.

Why do we obey social rules? Simple screen-based exercise that requires students to classify different types of social rules and sanctions.

The future of crime introduces students to the possibilities for new types of crime – and new agencies of social control – created by new technologies. And you don’t get newer than that.

Name that theory is a simple implementation of a classic student exercise: describe some fundamental aspect of a theory (“People are living up to their label when they commit crime”) and get students to see if they can identify it. The Presentation has 4 descriptions but it’s easy enough to add more. An interesting variation of this is to use commonsense descriptions of crime and get students to apply a sociological theory to the description.

Who Commits Crime? Basic Presentation that asks students to think about the question and identifies a range of possible sociological explanations. An accompanying worksheet fills-in some of the details.

Word Documents

Catch Me If You Can explores some basic / introductory ideas about crime (mainly of the white-collar variety) and deviance through the medium of the film “Catch Me If You Can”. i.e. students need to have seen the film before they can use it to explore / discuss the questions in this resource – which is it’s big advantage (it’s a nice idea to use something visual to hang ideas around) and drawback (if you haven’t seen the film you won’t be able to explore the questions…).

Measuring Crime Short document that examines some aspects of validity and reliability relating to official crime statistics. Also includes segment on the dark figure of crime and how it can be measured through self-report and victim studies and ends with an assessment of their advantages and disadvantages.

Social Controls: Simple fill-in-the-gaps type exercise on formal and informal types of social control.

Agencies of Social Control: Simple exercise designed to help students understand formal and informal social controls in the context of different agencies.