Violent and Sexual Offenders

Module overview

Would you like to understand why people are violent, or commit rape, or sexually abuse young children? Are people who do such things mentally ill? What might have happened to

them in their lives that makes them commit such serious offences? Can such people be rehabilitated or should they just be locked up forever? These are the kind of challenging but intriguing questions

which this third year optional module asks you to consider. It brings together theory and practice from criminology and forensic psychology to consider some of the possible causes of violent and sexually violent crime, and possible ways of working effectively with these offenders to help them to change.

Aims and Objectives

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the role of mental illness in the commission of violent and sexual offending.
Demonstrate knowledge and understanding about the use of psychological risk assessment tools, including factors in clinical diagnosis, in the management of violent and sexual offenders.
Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the contested concept of offender rehabilitation, theories of desistance from crime, and their related criminal justice policy and practice implications.

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

Demonstrate an ability to think critically and independently and to problem-solve.
Demonstrate written and verbal skills of comprehension, analysis, interpretation, presentation, and debate.
Demonstrate research skills, including the ability to identify and gather appropriate library and web-based resources, to analyse them, and to use them to construct a coherent and logical argument.
Demonstrate an ability to utilise ideas from social sciences and to understand the value of interdisciplinary approaches.
Demonstrate an ability to work both independently and constructively with others.
Demonstrate organizational and time management skills.

Learning and Teaching

Teaching and learning methods

This module is taught through a combination of lectures and seminars delivered by academic staff and consolidated by students' private study and assessment preparation.

Study time
Type	Hours
Teaching	15
Independent Study	135
Total study time	150

Assessment

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Essay	100%

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Essay	100%

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External