Advanced Topics in Criminology

This unit aims to provide students with applications of criminology and criminological research in the Australian justice system.  Students will investigate sociological concepts including proactive crime prevention initiatives, the development and assessment of speciality courts (eg. drug courts), criminology and gender, criminology and cultures, and offender rehabilitation programs. 

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

1.      Critique criminological dispositions that emerge from the social world based on sociological understanding of their genesis.

2.      Evaluate criminological understandings about crime through the major theoretical perspectives from the sociological concept of deviance that explain this activity.

3.      Analyse, interpret and apply a range of key sociological concepts to appraise the ways in which social processes and structures respond to the categories of deviance in a contemporary context.

4.      Apply the principles and theories taken from the evidence found in published documents and evaluate this through informed written argument.

5.      Assess the legal and judicial processes in the Australian legal system.