Criminology BSc (Hons)

Compulsory

• SC1603 - Contemporary Challenges

  This module provides hands-on experience of how social and political science operates outside the university, focusing on Contemporary Challenges. Over ten weeks, you will work in small groups on applied research addressing real-world social, political, and institutional problems. The emphasis is on learning by doing, supported by mentoring, methods training, professional exposure, and structured reflection on skills development.

• SC1601 - Fundamentals of the Social Sciences

  This module will introduce you to key concepts, theories, thinkers and approaches in the social and political sciences and history. You will also learn the techniques used by a range of disciplines within the social and political sciences and history for gaining and validating knowledge of the social and political world.

• SC1605 - Special Subjects B

  In this module, you get to dive deep into your own area of study and experience the full range of subjects taught by Brunel Social and Political Sciences. As part of the module, you’ll take three classes - at least one from your degree subject, with the others chosen from across the department. Classes cover a huge range of topics, from media production to African history, crime investigation to the climate crisis - so you can gain new skills, explore pressing problems, and follow where your curiosity leads you. 

• SC1604 - Special Subjects A

  In this module, you get to dive deep into your own area of study and experience the full range of subjects taught by Brunel Social and Political Sciences. As part of the module, you’ll take three classes – at least one from your degree subject, with the others chosen from across the department. Classes cover a huge range of topics, from media production to African history, crime investigation to the climate crisis – so you can gain new skills, explore pressing problems, and follow where your curiosity leads you. 

Compulsory

• CY2608 - Crime and Deviance in Society

  An introduction to notions of deviance in terms of othering, stigma, and criminalisation. It will consider the changing nature of deviance, how perceptions of deviance change over time, and how these perceptions impact on individuals and communities. Deviance will be studied through a number of different lenses that consider deviance as a part of a process of oppression but also a source of resistance.

• CY2609 - Global and Intersectional Criminology

  This module will enable students to use intersectional perspectives to develop their understandings of crime, deviance, victimisation, social harm, and justice in a global context. The module will explore contemporary criminological theories and debates, with a particular concern for those from the Global South and/or relating to wider global contexts.

• CO2605 - Researching Your World

  This module provides an advanced understanding of research methodologies, with a particular focus on data analysis. Equipping students with an understanding and appreciation of the important theoretical paradigms that underpin qualitative and quantitative social and communications research traditions. Furnishing students with the tools and skills required to conduct and evaluate their own empirical social and communications research.

Optional

• SO2610 - Colonialism, Migration and Global Racism

  This module explores the concept, meaning and practices of ‘race’, ethnicity, racialization, and global racisms. It identifies how ‘race’ and racism have evolved over time, and in different contexts - both nationally in the contemporary UK as well as in other parts of the world. 

• SO2611 - Digital Culture

  This module considers the shape of new media technologies such as iPhones - has changed the basis of contemporary social life and culture. This module will examine some of the key transformations that are taking place through digital culture. Key aims of the module include:

  • an introduction to debates on digital culture and society;#
  • conceptual, analytical and practical resources to understand contemporary issues on digital culture;
  • the use of case studies to focus on debates around digital culture;
  • to consider the extent to which digital culture is changing social relations at local and global levels.
• CY2613 - Gangs, Street Culture and Crime

  Students will be introduced to the history and the various theoretical debates surrounding the nature of street gangs and street cultural formation. Using a wide range of criminological and empirical research, the causes of gangs and street culture, and the responses to this global phenomenon will be considered.

• CY2610 - Mental Health and Offending

  An introduction to the key theoretical perspectives surrounding mental health and offending, it ensures students are familiar with the key legislation, policy, and practice in this area. This will enable students to critically question the relationship between mental health and offending, and support them to critically evaluate the key debates and controversies in the field.

• PP2628 - National Security Intelligence
  Students will receive an introduction and overview to the field of national security intelligence and examine in greater detail intelligence collection, analysis, counterintelligence, covert action, and other selected topics.
• CY2611 - Victims: Crime, Social Harm and Justice

  The module will introduce students to criminal justice policies and practices that relate to victims and enable them to think critically about who we consider to be a victim. Students will also be introduced to the field of victimology and explore the how victims are characterised, their experiences of the criminal justice system, and broader societal responses to victimisation.

• SA2619 - War and Humanitarianism

  This module aims to provide students with a critical understanding of the main themes in the anthropology of war and humanitarian assistance. These include the anthropology of violence, how societies respond in the aftermath of violence, the origins of humanitarianism, the concept of emergency, refugees and Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘bare life’.

• CY2612 - Youth Crime and Youth Justice

  This module will consider the history of youth crime and youth justice. It will furnish students with a sociological and criminological understanding of contemporary issues relating to youth crime, providing both a practical and critical understanding of young people's involvement in crime and deviance and the various responses to youth crime by the criminal justice system.

Compulsory

• CY3606 - Criminology in Practice

  Develop wider employability skills and understanding of professional practice related to a degree in criminology. Students will also be introduced to a number of areas of employment related to criminal justice practice to encourage them to think about their future career pathways and professional development.

• SC3601 - Dissertation

  To develop students’ abilities to plan, design and execute a research project in the subject area of their degree programme, to communicate their ideas and critically evaluate the success of their project. 

Optional

• SO3614 - Apocalypse! Crisis and Society

  Explore the social & political significance of representations of national and global crises, and public perceptions of controversies. Students analyse dystopian popular and scientific discourses that dwell on disorder and catastrophe. Indicative content includes risk, uncertainty, globalisation, the environment, disease, capitalism. Public understanding, perception and engagement with popular and scientific controversies and notions of crisis.

• CY3608 - Capitalism and Sex

  This module will examine the relationship between capitalism and sex through a number of theoretical lenses which explore how sex intersects with the generation of profit. Using both historical and post-modern examples students will be encouraged to engage critically with debates around traditional and postmodern forms of sex work and the impacts of feminism on those debates.

• SO3625 - Cities, Culture and Social Change

  This module introduces you to urban sociology and builds your understanding of how cities develop, how they’re lived in and how they’re represented. You’ll explore the relationship between space, culture and social life in contemporary cities, using theoretical tools and practical examples to bring those ideas to life.

• GY3611 - Climate Justice in a Changing World

  The module introduces students to current political and academic debates on climate justice in a changing world. The students will explore the different dimensions of climate justice, including the ways in which climate impacts and responsibilities are geographically (in space) and intergenerationally (over time) unequally distributed, and how they are stratified along class, race, and gender-based lines. The students will learn to analyse climate policies from a justice perspective, including questions related to historical and geographical responsibilities and the distribution of the costs and burdens of the green transition. Moving beyond a narrow focus on distributional justice, the students will also explore procedural and epistemic dimensions of climate justice. They will gain an understanding of the emergence and development of climate justice movements, their political challenges, and the role these movements have played in bringing justice questions to the forefront of the climate agenda.  

• CY3615 - Crimes of the Powerful

  The aim of this module is to broaden the criminological imagination beyond the poor and powerless, examining the most serious and harmful behaviours committed by states, corporations, political economies, and other powerful entities. Studying crimes of the powerful challenges orthodox representation of ‘crime’ and develops a deeper understanding of the politics of crime. Topics covered include state crimes, corporate crimes, state-corporate crimes, environmental crimes and harms, as well as a range of examples of the abuse of power.

• CY3611 - Criminal Law in Context

  Equipping students with a critical understanding of the socio-legal context of key aspects of the criminal law in England and Wales. These include violent and sexual offences, homicide, drugs and healthcare choices, public safety, property and security and disorder. 

• CY3612 - Drugs, Crime and Criminal Justice

  Examine historical and current debates concerning the criminalisation of a variety of drugs. This will introduce students to debates about the impact of the criminalisation of drugs on marginalised communities. Students will be introduced to debates about global drug markets and the changing nature of those markets over time.

• SO3615 - Global Migration

  Equips students with an understanding of the key concepts in global migration including the causes and consequences of migration, national and international responses to migration and the diversity of migrant flows within a global context, using cases from both Global North and Global South contexts.

• CY36XX - Housing, Harm and Inequality

  The module introduces students to a number of questions concerning notions of home and housing in contemporary society, and how sociologists and criminologists should confront these issues as they occupy a central place in political, public and mediated debates. It explores sociological and criminological debates around housing and the home, looking at the relationship between self, society and state. The module will focus on the importance of housing and home within the UK context. However, this focus will be considered through layers of intersectionality considering gender, race, ethnicity, marginalisation and cultural practices to consolidate a knowledge base in terms of theory, social policy and politics. It will also introduce home and housing in a global context.

• SO3617 - Lawyers, Guns and Money: Making the Modern World System

  This module will explore issues raised by historical and political sociology regarding the development of the modern world-system. In particular the course will focus upon the rise to dominance of Europe in the building of the modern world-system and the explanations offered for this.

• GY3610 - Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking

  This module provides a ‘meta-critique’ of both the dominant and critical claims related to modern slavery and human trafficking. The module aims to introduce students to the historical debates on labour and migration that led to the current international laws on ‘human trafficking’ (and national laws on ‘modern slavery’ in the UK and Australia). Students will be able to critically analyse the geopolitics of several competing terminologies, such as ‘human trafficking’, ‘modern slavery’, ‘forced labour’, and ‘unfree labour’. They will be able to critically evaluate whether and how these terms help address labour exploitation and/or are selectively deployed to serve certain political ideologies. Not only will students develop critical lenses to analyse the dominant paradigm of ‘modern slavery’ and ‘human trafficking’, but they will also be able to critically interrogate the strengths, weaknesses, and biases of the critical literature. Overall, the module is designed to encourage students first to engage with critical perspectives and then to go beyond them to decolonise one of the most politically charged debates of the 21st century, enabling them to develop original ideas on how to address the exploitation, oppression, and rightlessness of all workers. 

• CYXXX - Power, Space and Resistance: Carceral Geographies
• CY3609 - Psychosocial Perspectives on Crime and Violence

  An interdisciplinary module which explores the psychosocial underpinnings of crime and violence in the contemporary world. It offers students the opportunity to move beyond common sense understandings of crime and criminal justice to consider the interconnected psychic, social and cultural processes involved in the development of criminal social identities.

• PP3622 - Terrorism and Counterterrorism
  This module aims to address a series of empirical questions regarding the causes, conduct, and consequences of campaigns of terrorism in the modern world. You will gain an understanding of a series of key debates in the social science literature.
• SA3615 - War and Humanitarianism

  This module aims to provide students with a critical understanding of the main themes in the anthropology of war and humanitarian assistance. These include the anthropology of violence, how societies respond in the aftermath of violence, the origins of humanitarianism, the concept of emergency, refugees and Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘bare life’.