This module will be based on flexible learning materials delivered using the Blackboard virtual learning environment and selected readings provided in:

(a) a limited number of course texts

(b) reading packs of selected journal articles, book chapters, reports, and online news coverage.

The Blackboard environment will provide a context for:

- Blended learning comprising pre-recorded e-lectures on each of the topics.

- Tutors to highlight key issues, problems and debates for discussion.

- Students to undertake a range of structured activities which will involve, for example, problem-solving, literature searching, engagement with group discussions, and scenarios.

- Tutors to provide guidance and advice.

- Students to access guidance on online resources available via the internet and the university’s e-resources pages.

The readings will provide:

- An essential knowledge base which will be available to all students.

- A resource for coursework and all assessed assignments.

- A point of departure for the structured activities set for students. Students will be expected to engage fully and critically with the resources and activities that are provided. Tutors will arrange to be online once a week for 13 weeks at a designated UK time for virtual discussion with students, and to answer questions relating to the weekly topic. This session will be recorded and available for students to view.

Tutors will give online academic support and guidance to students throughout the module, and will respond on a timely basis.

Students will engage in independent study outside of the lectures/discussions – this will include:

- Complete required readings that are relevant to each week’s topic. These readings will give students a deeper understanding of each topic under discussion.

- Listen to a series of pre-recorded lectures that cover key issues on the topic, and a session on assignment guidance.

- Preparing for taught sessions by completing the key reading(s).

A networked computer capable of accessing the internet and running applications such as Blackboard and Adobe Acrobat.

A Word Processor compatible with Microsoft Word.

The Blackboard VLE will be available to support this module. Details will be supplied in the module handbook.

N/A

1. Produce a campaign output that shows acquisition of a critical and nuanced understanding of a specific crime perpetrated by the powerful (from a case study encountered on the module) using relevant criminological theories and academic scholarship.
2. Apply relevant theories and academic literature to showcase impactful recommendations that can be translated into policy and applied at a global level to reduce the crime.
3. Develop a ‘behind the scenes’ account that showcases the research, critical decisions and strategic thinking that underpins the campaign output.

Assessment 1

Students will produce a 'campaign' designed to increase policy makers understanding of a specific crime perpetrated by the powerful (pertaining to one of the topics encountered on the module). This campaign will also include producing a couple of practical policy-based recommendations to reduce this crime.

-Campaign output can take the form of either:
-a written report (3,500 words)
or a creative visual/audio (e.g. visual advert with audio narration, a single slide poster with audio narration (duration of 15 minutes).

-Output needs to be designed to raise awareness about the specific crime perpetrated by the powerful
-Tailored to the audience of policy makers in mind as an audience (meets LO 1&2)

Assessment 2

-Account of producing the campaign.
-Students can elect to write a 2,500 word account or produce a 10-minute audio recording overlaid on a few (up to three) presentation slides that offers a rationale for the production of the campaign ('behind the scenes').¿(Meets LO 3)

This module immerses students into a series of critical discussions about the topic of Crimes of the Powerful with special focus around influencing policy.

Students can expect to debate issues such as what and who is considered powerful (C Wright Mills). Recent examples may include, powerful state actors in China, Russia, and the Middle-East. Critical evaluation of older conceptualisations of power e.g. power as relational (Foucault) and instead, conceptualising power in terms of money, influence and means.

A key aim of the module is to examine a number of relevant in-depth case studies concerning different themes of crimes of the powerful, which may include:

-The Arms Industry (weapons smuggling and violence),
-Corporations (such as Microsoft and Amazon, big Pharma, Oxytocin, water companies in the UK, Post Office Horizon scandal, Trafigura involved in the disposal of toxic waste in the Ivory coast, environmental crimes in Bangladesh
-The press and the Media (Murdoch)
-Education specifically the complex relationship in HE to powerful actors (examples to include the relationship between LSE and Gadaffi, opening the HE market to China, Russian Oligarch’s sponsorship of Oxford political studies, the use of NDAs to hide misconduct at universities)
-Global finance (Libor rigging, the abuses of banks and money laundering, Russian Oligarchs, Putin)
-Space is also given to the difficulties of disentangling of the role of the state and state crime, either repressive power and authoritarianism or liberal permissiveness and non-intervention
-A critical examination of companies development of AI and the potential for global (mis)use of technology and AI
-Finally, consideration is given to the various strategies that attempt to expose, tackle and bring the powerful to justice for their crimes (for example recent imprisonment of high-profile Nigerian politicians for the harvesting of organs and exposure of the crimes of South Korean pop stars involved in sex scandals).
-Space in this module will also be devoted to completing the assignment and support around thinking strategically in the production of suitable recommendations for challenging crimes of the powerful

This module immerses students into a series of critical discussions about the topic of Crimes of the Powerful with special focus around influencing policy.

Students can expect to debate issues such as what and who is considered powerful (C Wright Mills). Recent examples may include, powerful state actors in China, Russia, and the Middle-East. Critical evaluation of older conceptualisations of power e.g. power as relational (Foucault) and instead, conceptualising power in terms of money, influence and means.

A key aim of the module is to examine a number of relevant in-depth case studies concerning different themes of crimes of the powerful, which may include:

-The Arms Industry (weapons smuggling and violence),
-Corporations (such as Microsoft and Amazon, big Pharma, Oxytocin, water companies in the UK, Post Office Horizon scandal, Trafigura involved in the disposal of toxic waste in the Ivory coast, environmental crimes in Bangladesh
-The press and the Media (Murdoch)
-Education specifically the complex relationship in HE to powerful actors (examples to include the relationship between LSE and Gadaffi, opening the HE market to China, Russian Oligarch’s sponsorship of Oxford political studies, the use of NDAs to hide misconduct at universities)
-Global finance (Libor rigging, the abuses of banks and money laundering, Russian Oligarchs, Putin)
-Space is also given to the difficulties of disentangling of the role of the state and state crime, either repressive power and authoritarianism or liberal permissiveness and non-intervention
-A critical examination of companies development of AI and the potential for global (mis)use of technology and AI
-Finally, consideration is given to the various strategies that attempt to expose, tackle and bring the powerful to justice for their crimes (for example recent imprisonment of high-profile Nigerian politicians for the harvesting of organs and exposure of the crimes of South Korean pop stars involved in sex scandals).
-Space in this module will also be devoted to completing the assignment and support around thinking strategically in the production of suitable recommendations for challenging crimes of the powerful

Treadwell J., and Lynes A., (forthcoming). Crimes of the Powerful for Policy. Policy Press. Bristol

Foucault M., (2020). Power: The essential works 1954-84. London. Penguin

C Wright Mills ([1956] 2000). The Power Elite. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Kotkin J (2020). The Coming of Neo-Feudalism¿A warning to the global middle class. Encounter books

Coleman, R., Sim, J., Tombs, S., Whyte, D. (eds.) (2009) State Power Crime. London: SAGE.

Goldstraw-White, J. (2012) White-Collar Crime: Accounts of Offending Behaviour. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Rorie, M.L. (ed.) (2020) The Handbook of White-Collar Crime. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.

Rothe, D.L., Kauzlarich, D. (2016) Crimes of the Powerful: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge.

Tombs, S., Whyte, D. (2015) The Corporate Criminal: Why Corporations Must Be Abolished. Abingdon: Routledge.