Sociology Revision Booklets: 4. Crime and Deviance

As you might expect, given its status as one of the most-popular a-level sociology options, when it comes to revision resources for crime and deviance both teachers and students are rather spoilt for choice.

I’ve decided, therefore, to split this post into two parts (probably – there may be more): the first (this one) has a range of Word / Pdf resources aimed at students, while the second focuses on PowerPoint resources teachers are more-likely to find useful for delivering revision lessons.

As ever, if you decide to use these resources you need to check:

• the Specification: is it the one you’re following?
• the date: has the Spec. you’re using been updated since these resources were created?
• the content: even if you’re following a different Spec., there may well be a fair bit of information crossover which means revision material produced for one Spec. may still be useful in the context of another.

Once you’re happy with this, I’ve found what I think are a number of useful revision resources:

1. Crime and Deviance Revision Book: When the author called this a “book” they weren’t joking: running to almost 60 pages, this is an extensive set of notes covering all the major topics (Theories, Patterns, Globalisation, Victims etc.).

2. Social Theories and Crime Notes: This makes no bones about the fact it’s pretty-much a straight textbook rip-off – or precis if you have more-delicate sensibilities than me (the “Webb Book Summary” subtitle sort-of gives the game away). As you might expect from this, there’s coverage of the main Modules within this Unit (Theories, Media, Globalisation, Green Crime, Human Rights and State Crime, Control, Punishment and Victims, Suicide)

3. Crime Revision Booklet (Jessica Cadman): Dating from 2011, this runs to 40 pages of bulleted notes on 4 main topics: Theories, Social Distribution, Crime and the Media, Crime control, prevention and punishment).

I’ve left it in its original Word format so that you can change the font easily if you want. The booklet uses Comic Sans which may not be everyone’s favourite font…

If you want a Pdf version I’ve dug-out a slightly different version of the booklet that has some additional revision material.

4. Crime and Deviance Revision Guide: As you might expect from Greenhead, one of the top-performing UK Colleges, this is a professional-looking revision guide that provides short notes on aspects of each topic, combined with more-extensive evaluation points.

The pack includes exam questions, examiner reports and the like which relate to a previous iteration of the AQA exam, but since it’s a Word document these can either be removed or you can add more up-to-date exam material.

5. AQA Crime and Deviance (and Methods): If you prefer a more-visual way of displaying revision notes this is probably the Pack for you. It’s basically a series of PowerPoint slides (80 in all) in pdf format, each of which displays notes on a given topic. It covers all the main AQA topics (although keep in mind it relates to a non-current Spec. so it may require editing) and throws-in additional material on sociological theory and methods as a nice bonus.

6. OCR Crime and Deviance: If you teach the OCR Spec. you’ll be painfully-aware revision resources are generally few-and-far-between and while it’s nice to be able to present just such a resource I wouldn’t get too excited about it. It’s basically some very functional notes coupled with sample exam questions and advice. On the plus side, at least someone (Nanouska Tighe) bothered. On the downside the file dates from 2010.

7. Crime and Deviance Revision Notes: This extensive set of revision notes by Mark Gill mainly covers the main sociological theories with a few pages on the social distribution of crime, the criminal justice system and surveillance for good measure. And when I say “extensive” I’m not exaggerating (much).

Update

I’ve found two more revision resources I thought it would be useful to add to the general list:

1. Crime, by Leigh Rust-Ashford, is an altogether more-comprehensive set of notes with a strong focus on evaluation (always useful in a revision resource). The resource also includes practice questions, short activities and a poem (which is actually an interesting technique for memorising information – one way to sell it to them is to call it Sociology Rapping, as opposed to Poetry). The resource covers:

• Theories
• Social distribution (ethnicity, class)
• Media and crime.

2. Sociology of Crime and Deviance: I may already have posted this extensive set of notes by Miss Sakine Koc (things get a little hazy at times…) but even if I have it’s useful to have all this stuff in one place. Probably. It includes all the Usual Suspects (Theories, Distribution, Globalisation…).