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Introduction

Social Science . Coursework Crime and Legal . Systems Sarah Mullen Contents Introduction I have chosen to do my course work on the subject of crime and legal systems. My hypothesis is 'peoples fears of crime is not justified' I plan to find out if people are more afraid of crime than they should be and whether they are correctly informed about the rates of crime. I will also try to find out if males or females from certain family types commit a larger percentage of crime. I have chosen this topic because I am interested in both sociology and crime so I feel this would be the perfect subject for me to study. Also I think other people will find this subject interesting to read about. I am optimistic that this subject will allow me to get a good range of information and results. I have several methods of investigation planned: * The first is a questionnaire (quantitative methodology). I think this will be useful because I will be able to find out other peoples views and opinions. Also it may be completed at the person's leisure. The problem with using a questionnaire is that some people might not be honest and I have no way of knowing if what they say is true. To overcome this problem I will send them anonymously so that people do not feel under pressure to answer in a certain way. I hope that if the questions are personal hopefully they won't mind answering if it is anonymous Many of the questionnaires sent out are not returned but there is nothing that I can do to overcome this problem. Something I am a bit worried about is if I do not ask for clarification I will not know how accurate my results are. * The second is to look for information on the internet, in books and in newspapers (all forms of secondary methodology). ...read more.

Middle

He thinks he is stealing things not important to people and things that people wont notice so he doesn't think any thing is wrong. It seems as if he is almost addicted to the rush of adrenaline he gets from stealing so this is something we have to consider when trying to understand why people steal. Also he is not worried about getting caught because when his sister was caught she wasn't punished very hard so he no worries about getting caught so he has nothing to stop doing it for. Interpretation of research My hypothesis is 'people's fears of crime is not justified'. my research is to try to prove of disprove my hypothesis. I will try to make sure that all my research is relevant to this hypothesis. My first piece of research I am going to analyse is my newspaper cuttings. The first newspaper I found was from the summer of 2003 and in the independent. The headline is 'Judges bow to pressure for tougher prison sentences.' This article is about criminals being sentenced to longer jail terms than ever before. The sentence lengths have increased by a big amount of even in the last year. if people read this newspaper they should feel reassured that anyone breaking the law and being caught will be punished and sentenced for a longer time. the reason these new and harsher punishments have been enforced is because people are becoming afraid of crime and criminal are not worried about the consequences. if there is a harsher punishment people are less likely to attempt to break a law. As well as the sentences increasing there is also a higher chance of them being convicted. Now there is a 91 percent chance of being convicted and being convicted for burglary and 98 percent chance for rape. This source is trying to give people faith in the legal system and trying to give them reassurance that work is being done and to try to make them feel safer. ...read more.

Conclusion

I regularly read up the newspaper to find information about crime. I also went to the library to see whether there was any information there. the internet was probably the easiest form of research that I used. It could all be done easily in a short space of time. The only place that I feel there are weaknesses in my project is in my questionnaire some of the questions I should have asked people to the elaborate on so that I got a better understanding of how they felt. if I was to do the project again that this is what I would change. My evidence has shown that people are afraid of crime but often in areas of that they don't need to be. My opinion was that they wouldn't have justified reason for being scared of crime and my evidence has shown that to an extent this is true with. I don't think that my project is biased in any way because I simply asked people their opinion and compared it at the facts and shown to me at . I picked this subject because I knew that it be hard for me to be biased about it. from the work we did in class I knew some of these facts about crime figures it before I did this course I wouldn't have known these facts. That's why I feel that people should be informed in the same way that I am and should be able to do which at their own leisure. I feel that the process that i adopted was a good one as it was time efficient because I send out questionnaires first because I knew they would take the longest to be returned. will I also feel that my hypothesis was a good one because of it allowed to find a lot of information on the topic and it allowed to make a good questionnaire. I didn't find the project to difficult and I feel this is because of my hypothesis and the way I carried out my research. ?? ?? ?? ?? ...read more.

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