Diversity and Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System

Course Content:

This module will enable students to contextualise Criminology?s past and present
engagement with diversity and discrimination. The relationship between crime and
discriminatory practices will be explored. The responses of the criminal justice process to
diversity will be documented and evaluated.

Topics covered include:
? Defining difference and understanding diversity.
? The social construction of difference and criminological theory.
? Diversity and the experience of victimization.
? Discrimination and the culture of policing.
? Tackling discrimination; avenues of redress and examples of good
practice.
? Disproportional treatment and penal sanctions.
? Agency responses to domestic abuse and male sexual assault.
? Youth, ethnicity and violent crime.
? Legislative changes in the diversity and discrimation spheres.
? The exploration of the development of issues and policies for
understanding and explaining the development of diversity and antidiscrimination
policy in relation to areas such as hate crime; domestic
abuse and honour crimes; sexual assault; female genital mutilation and
human trafficking.

Autumn Semester:
? Diversity & Discrimination Explained.
? Policing Response to Victims of Domestic Violence ? Then & Now
? Historical Perspectives & Police Practice (Macpherson & Scarman & Islamaphobia
? A Gendered Victim of Rape?
? The Social Construction of Difference in Criminological Theory
? Legislation and its Impact on the Sex Work Industry & Male Sex Work: Gender
Discrimination and Criminal Justice Policy
? Domestic Abuse: Responses Then and Now
? Ethnicity and mass incarceration?

Spring Semester:
? Gang? Culture & Female involvement in Male Gangs
? Hate Crime
? Policies in practice: The Penal Placement of Transgendered Offenders
? Gender Bias in Conceptualising the Criminal
? Harmful Cultural Practices (Female Genital Mutilation)
? Harmful Cultural Practices (Child Witches).

Teaching:
Weekly 1 hour Lectures and 1 hour Seminars

Assessment:
STUDY OPTION 1:
? 3000 word Critical Literature Review
STUDY OPTION 2: Alternative assessment (tbc)
STUDY OPTION 3: Alternative assessment (tbc)

Study Option 1 = Whole Year
Study Option 2 = Autumn
Study Option 3 = Spring/summer