ATS1282: Criminal Justice: An Introduction

From an objective standpoint, ATS1282 is pretty good. The unit is organised quite well, and covers a range of different topics. Over the semester, we covered the following topics – policing (roles and styles), policing and the community, courts (trial and evidence), courts (determining guilt), sentencing and punishments, social inequality and access to justice, victims and victimology, punishment, penalty and prisons, crime prevention and juvenile justice. Clearly, the unit had quite a lot of breadth – but unfortunately, did not have enough depth. Instead of cramming a heap of different topics into the unit, I personally would have preferred to cover a couple of topics in greater detail; however, in the unit’s defence, it is an introductory unit. The other important thing to note with this unit is that it covers a lot of the content taught in VCE Legal Studies and first year law. Now, this can either be a good or a bad thing. On the plus side, it means you enter the subject with a lot of background knowledge and therefore, do not have to put as much effort into remembering and learning the content. However, on the downside, it can make the unit very disengaging and boring. Personally, I found the unit very repetitive and a bit boring. However that being said, the unit does introduce students to a number of new topics, which are quite enjoyable. Therefore, if you’re thinking about taking ATS1282, know that it is an introductory unit.

- 5%. Students are given a template for their essay plan, and state which essay question they’ve chosen, and outline their contention, arguments (and how these link to their contention) and evidence. As long as you follow the essay plan template and your essay seems to be on-track and relevant, you should receive 4-5/5 marks.

- 40%. The exam is closed book and students are given 2 hours writing time and 10 minutes reading time. In the exam, students had to write two essays. For the first essay, all students were given the same question; however, the question was rather broad so there were different approaches students could take in their essays. For the second essay, you got to choose from four different essay questions.

The lecturers changed, depending on the topic – however all of the lecturers were quite good in my opinion. All of the lecturers were very knowledgeable, and were generally quite engaging.

- 15%. Students complete Moodle quizzes throughout the semester. These are based on the weekly readings. Each quiz is worth 2% or 3%, and you usually have at least 7 days to complete each quiz in your own time. The main difference between these quizzes and those in ATS1281 however is that students only had one attempt on these quizzes, as opposed to having unlimited attempts.

No – however, students were given a little bit of information on what the exam questions would be (although not as much as was provided in ATS1281), so you can prepare for the exam based on this information.

3.5 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture.

- 40%. The essay is worth 40% of your overall mark and should be around 2,000 words (+/- 10%) – 500 words more than the ATS1281 essay. The essay question, marking rubric and other information are supplied early in the semester on Moodle, so you should try and get started on the essay early in the semester.

I purchased the prescribed textbook, however it wasn’t really necessary. However, I believe the textbook is changing next year, so the new textbook might be more helpful and important than the one used this semester.

1x 1 hour lecture each week.
1x 1 hour tutorial each week (compulsory).

2017, Semester 2.

Research Task & Online activity (10%, 5% each) and Major Essay 2,000 words (40%) Attendance (10%) End of semester Exam (40%)

To be honest, I was going to take this unit instead of Philosophy this year as one of my possible minors but I was turned off by the handbook description as it sounded really dry and tedious. However, while I still took this unit instead of Philosophy because I thought why not give it a try.

I was disappointed. First of all, I really would have to say that Wednesday afternoons listening to the 2 hour lecture was my favourite, mainly because I was genuinely interested in the content and that the lecturers were often interesting and they really did present tough questions for us to think about. I also wished that I had done this earlier in the year as the unit really was interesting and it did give me insight to crime.

But and this is really big but, there was no depth. I felt like while I was able to argue about crime and provide solutions, there was no real discussion in tutorials. It was like a regurgitation of what was spoken about in the lecture. The tutorials always begin with questions about definitions and we were tasked to talk into groups and then explain our thoughts. While this seems ideal, group talk doesn't always work, especially in tough groups. But the main complaint here is that the questions were far too basic, they didn't really prompt any discussion. Like I said, they were just definition questions which asked us what x definition was and why it happened, there was no, challenging this definition or questioning its acceptance. There was no scenario scenes where we could have used the new terms we learnt and came up with, or tried to come up with solutions to a possible problem.

In short, I felt like we weren't trusted enough to share our opinion and that as long as we put in the terms that were mentioned in the lecture in our essay, that we'd be guaranteed a good mark. It's really disappointing because we could have talked more about Bentham's theory, the positivist model, and the theory of technologies of power as reasons for why people choose the criminal life. Now, I don't know if this was covered in Semester 1 but I know that this would have made the unit more interesting.

Another criticism is that while the first two lecturers were amazing , the rest didn't really exude any enthusiasm. There wasn't enough feeling that hey, as future criminologists, your viewpoint should be challenged and you should think about things. To me, it felt like we were being taught but not really taught. Like we were good enough to participate but not really learn. Now I don't know if that's too harsh a review but I really felt like with all the interesting topics covered that at least the tutorials could have had some challenging questions instead of "what is this and that and why does this and that happen", because in all honesty anyone can define why things happen and why. It's in the readings, it's not that hard. The real thinking comes when real scenarios happen. To be fair though, we did have extra readings but again, the questions in those readings were pretty simplistic. eg. what is mandatory sentencing and why is it important etc. They were all questions we could all answer.

Nonetheless, it is a good unit and if you are interested in doing Criminology, it is not that bad to take, but be prepared to not have real class discussions.

Lecturers varied depending on the module. First three weeks was Asher Flynn specialising on Police, then James Roffee on Courts, others also included the co-ordinator Bree Carlton, & also Danielle Tyson.

Yes, until 2011 but 2011 does not really count as the unit was changed since then. The format of the exams now consists of two sections which ask you to write a short essay instead of just the definition questions like in 2011.

2.5 out of 5

Yes

The custom textbook is a must for tutorial discussions as readings are often discussed in the tutes. If you don't want to buy it, though, you definitely can just exist with reading the slides and listening to the lectures as most of the information is cross-presented, however, there are just some little facts and other theories that were not covered in depth, that you could probably benefit from reading. If you want to do well in the exam, having this book is also helpful as the lecturers really are keen in you using the criminology terms such as overpolicing, underpolicing, recidivism etc.

1x 2 hour lecture, 1x 1 hour tute

Semester 2, 2014

(Optional) TBA