Crime, Criminology, and Critique (CRIM10001)

Criminology is the study of crime, social harm and how we respond to it. In this subject, you will take on the big questions of the discipline: What is crime? Who is the criminal? Criminologists seek to understand and explain the complex causes and motivations for crime and how categorisations of crime can change according to time, place and politics.

In this subject, you will examine a range of topics including youth crime, street crime, crime in the home and crimes of the powerful. You will learn how understandings of crime inform and produce a range of state responses and varied experiences of justice/injustice. Given the local context of colonial Australia, we pay particular attention to crime as a settler colonial construct. Through your reading, classroom activities with peers and assessment tasks, you will critically reflect on the ways that crime is constructed and popularised, and build your academic skills. The subject will require you to read and think critically about your own assumptions, media representations, and the ways that powerful groups define, measure and regulate crime.

Crime, Criminology and Critique is available as a Bachelor of Arts Discovery subject, supporting your introduction to university and fostering connections within your course. If you are taking this as your Discovery subject, you will need to concurrently complete the three compulsory Joining Melbourne modules.