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A 3,500 word essay based on one of the questions in the course outline in which students will demonstrate their understanding of how the criminological imagination shifts over history, geography and cultural context (50% of mark). Choose ONE of the following questions from the course handbook 1. “Statistics show we are safer than ever”. Evaluate this claim. Your answer should review available research evidence and include a discussion of research methodology. 2. ‘Definitions of crime work in the interests of the powerful.’ Discuss the above sentence with reference to research in the reading list. 3. How are representations of places linked to understandings of criminality? Discuss using examples. 4. Critically evaluate the ‘broken windows’ thesis as an explanation for the relationship between disorder and criminality. 5. What is a ‘moral panic’ and does this concept retain its relevance? Discuss using examples. 6. Is the ‘illegal immigrant’ a contemporary folk devil? Discuss in relation to Operation Vaken or other contemporary examples. 7. How is the concept of social exclusion tied to understandings of crime within contemporary criminology? 8. Critically discuss whether mapping exercises, the delimitation of hotspots, and the creation of security zones are effective in representing ‘safety’. 9. Critically evaluate strategies of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design as a means of ensuring urban safety and security within particular urban contexts. 10. Does an over-reliance on technological fixes as a panacea to problems of crime work to the detriment of actual crime prevention? 11. Do security measures based on biometric data ensure our safekeeping or do they simply criminalise ever-wider sections of the population? What are social implications of this? 12. The demands of capitalism limit the ability to treat corporate crimes as crimes. Discuss. 13. Is ‘white-collar crime’ crime? 14. How do the events of the sub-prime mortgage crisis reveal the way in which poverty is criminalised in contemporary society? 15. In certain circumstances, can hacking be considered legitimate in spite of its illegality? 16. Why are some forms of protest and political action criminalised and forbidden? Discuss using examples.