Students will select a documentary on an infamous criminal or crime and apply appropriate theories and concepts to analyze, explain the criminal actions of that specific person or crime. Watching a documentary will help with examples and background information not usually found in short readings.
Format
Minimum 1,000 words. Include word count on your assignment somewhere.
References and proper citations are required if you use information other than the text.
Highlight or bold the theories/concepts.
Typed, Times New Roman or Arial font ONLY
Your paper should not have more than 3% of direct quotes.
Submit your paper via the Assignment link below. You must copy and paste.
Paper Format
Introduction – describe the main idea of your paper (Title of documentary, why you choose it, list of theories you will discuss). This should be about 1 paragraph.
Crime/Criminal – give some of the details of the criminal or crime.
Use this glossary Download glossaryOpen this document with ReadSpeaker docReaderto help you with this paper.
Theories – Evaluate and apply at least 4 different theories to explain the crimes feature in the film. One (1) paragraph per theory is a good rule to follow. Explain the theory in your own words, then tell me how this theory explains (can be applied to) the criminal or crime featured in the documentary. If the theory has three parts, then you need to apply all three parts of the theory. This demonstrates that you thoroughly comprehend the theory. Be specific with examples and elaborate on the theory’s usefulness in understanding why people violate norms/laws/values. Bold/highlight theories.
Concepts – apply at least 4 concepts from the chapter/book. You can integrate these into the general discussion of the theories when necessary or discuss them at the end. (Example: discuss strain theory and in same paragraph discuss innovator). Concepts are “vocab” words or key statistics and patterns like victimization according to sex of person or age. Your choice of concepts will effect your grade on this paper. Selecting a concept like “crime” or “deviance” will reduce one’s score. Instead select concepts like “aging out of crime” or “incapacitation”. These concepts require a more elaborate discussion than the terms crime or deviance. Highlight/bold concepts.
Conclude – Summarize your thoughts. What did you think of the documentary? Do you think theories help us to make conclusions other than the generic “That was crazy!” What other crimes are you interested in? You can even state whether the current policies and laws are effective in controlling this crime.
