Beginning with an appreciation of the classicist approaches to thinking about crime, deviance, disorder, and punishment by sociologists and criminologists from the nineteenth centuries, though, many of these works has been criticized and subsequently modified, these early thoughts provide very useful road maps into contemporary debates about crime, disorder, social problems and vulnerable populations, and what could be and should be done about them. We will then look at more recent accounts of crime that came into prominence in the twenty-first century in the USA, UK, and Asia, and assess the limits and possibilities of criminological theorizing in the current global and local contexts.

Many of these numerous and diverse approaches to crime and offender management can be seen as a response to earlier theories – challenging them, debating them, extending them, or even a resurrection of part of them. Finally, the course will encourage students to see the relevance of criminological perspectives to their field research and enhance their preparation for their dissertations.