Course Catalogue

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This course introduces postgraduate students to complex debates about the pursuit of justice in response to various harms (in particular, harms that are criminalised). Rather than assuming the necessity or inevitability of existing criminal justice systems, we start by examining how this kind of justice has been understood and conceptualised in different places and at different times. Next, we examine the institutionalised forms of criminal justice that have emerged in contemporary societies and how they interact with intersecting inequalities. Then, we ask how criminal justice processes are experienced by people with different roles and stakes in them (e.g., as 'victims', 'offenders', families affected, practitioners) and whose experience of them may reflect their different social positions. By comparing how criminal justice is conceptualised, institutionalised and experienced, we aim to develop a critical understanding of whether, to what extent and in what sense, 'criminal' justice delivers what it promises.

10 x 2 hour in-person classes which combine short lecture inputs and seminar activities.

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30% [1,000 words]: Mid-term reflective writing assignment based on observing a Film or TV depiction of sentencing or sanctioning in criminal justice (to be agreed in advance with the Course Convenor).

70% [3,000 words]: An end-of-course essay.

This course aims to enable students to develop a critical understanding of how 'criminal' justice has evolved historically, how it has been institutionalised in contemporary democratic states (including in ways that exacerbate social inequalities), how it is experienced by those affected by it, and how it is instantiated through politics, policies, practices and public debate.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ Describe the historical development of 'criminal' justice as a response to criminalised harms.

■ Understand and critique major institutions of 'criminal' justice in contemporary democratic states, particularly in respect of their relationships with intersecting inequalities.

■ Explore and examine how 'criminal' justice processes are experienced by people with different roles and stakes in them (e.g. as 'victims', 'offenders', families affected, publics) and whose experience of them may reflect their different social positions.

■ Analyse and evaluate how 'criminal' justice is constituted and instantiated through politics, policy and practice, and how it is critiqued in debates about reform and abolition.

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.