Essay Topic
Your expertise has been recognized internationally by an Australian City Council interested in obtaining your services. The Melville City Council in Perth, Western Australia has engaged you as a crime prevention consultant (assume this is post-COVID-19). The Council desires your services because of their concerns about the rising number of complaints of crime in the Council area.
They have concerns in regards to crime at and near public transport locations (e.g. car parking facilities, pedestrian walkways, train platforms, and small retailers). Issues of concern have included, assaults/sexual assaults, vandalism/graffiti, bag snatching, car theft, theft from cars including damage to vehicles being stolen from. Select one (or all) of these concerns, develop a crime prevention plan you can pitch to the Council drawing upon the material covered in this unit.
You are to assume that there is a serious crime problem in Melville and that this is why you are being asked to provide a solution. You DO NOT have to prove a crime has occurred by collecting statistics or crime reports. Your critical response to this plan should draw on your knowledge about crime patterns, crime prevention theory, and the capacity to modify crime opportunities.
It is expected that you will draw heavily on empirical literature and applied criminological research to formulate and substantiate your argument. Your response will include a minimum of 15 references. Given the applied nature of this research and the wide range of sources of information that are available, it is acceptable to use government reports (e.g., the Australian Institute of Criminology reports) and evaluations undertaken by government agencies (e.g., finalists in both the Goldstein Awards and Tilley Awards) in addition to peer-reviewed academic sources (journal articles or edited books). Unpublished web pages are not acceptable sources of information. Neither is the lecture material.
You are expected to make an argument that is substantiated with the use of evidence. To receive a good mark for your work, your position will need to be justified and the literature you cite to demonstrate the veracity of your claim will need to be explained.
You cannot simply summarise the conclusions of a body of work and expect a good mark. You must explain specifically how researchers reached the conclusions they did. This may involve outlining specific findings from empirical studies or walking your reader through the logical progression of an author’s argument. These fully referenced ‘facts’ will provide the bedrock on which you will build your argument
