Unit Overview

How do we decide what behaviour is criminal? What is the difference between criminal behaviour and deviance? How do we explain why people commit crime? What makes someone a serial killer, or abusive to their own families?

Criminologists have produced theoretical explanations of why people commit crime, but which is the most useful? Are these theories relevant to all types of crime? What can we learn from the strengths and weaknesses of each? How can these theories be applied to real life scenarios and real life crimes?

Knowing about the different types of crime and the criminological approaches to theory will give you a sharper insight into the kind of thinking used by experts and politicians to explain crime and criminality. Public law makers are informed by theory and apply these theories to their own solutions to the problem of crime. By undertaking this unit, you will learn to support, challenge and evaluate expert opinion and be able to support your ideas with reliable and factual evidence.

At the end of this unit you will have gained the skills to evaluate some criminological theories and know there are debates within the different theories. You will understand how changes in criminological theory have influenced policy. You will also have gained the skills to apply the theories to a specific crime or criminal in order to understand both the behaviour and the theory.

*This unit is synoptic with unit 1, so everything you learn in unit 1, will be relevant and could come up in this unit's exam*