Criminology

Unit 1

AC1.3
Assessment criteria Content Amplification
Explain the consequences of Consequences • ripple effect • cultural Learners should have an
unreported crime • decriminalisation • police understanding of the positive and
prioritisation • unrecorded crime • negative effects of unreported
cultural change • legal change • crime on the individual and on
procedural change society.

RIPPLE EFFECT

A ripple effect describes how the impact of crime can spread beyond the immediate victim throughout their family,
friends and community. In other words, it ripples out much wider than the initial victims.

Consider the offence of domestic abuse and the number of people this could affect. Abusers are often abused as
children, or have witnessed the abuse of parents as children. If this goes unreported it can appear that it is
acceptable, or children are socialised into this behaviour, which goes unpunished and the repeats as adults, causing
a ripple effect. It can also affect other family members or neighbours who might hear the abuse, friends and work
colleagues can also be affected.

CULTURAL

Sometimes there are cultural differences that make actions criminal in one country and not another. Cultural
differences may mean that crimes are unreported or not recognised. It can be difficult to understand cultures that
are very different from our own. Often people will ignore or turn a blind eye to actions or customs that are alien to
ours. They may feel it is not their place to interfere and therefore criminals and potential criminals may believe they
can proceed without consequences.

Female genital mutilation is illegal in the UK but culturally, there are some communities who believe it is an
acceptable thing to do. Similarly, with honour killing, while alien to Western society there are many cultures that
believe it is appropriate to take such drastic action.

Case study

KRISTY BAMU

The case of Kristy Bamu saw a 15 year old boy being accused of involvement in witchcraft and then killed by
members of his own family. The family were originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where witchcraft or
Kindoki is practised and exorcisms are carried out in some churches. Kristy was tortured over the course of several
days before being drowned in a bath during an exorcism.

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Task:

While watching the following documentary, take notes that amplify the case study of Kristy Bamu – an example of
cultural reasons for crime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAzxkp1nJj0

DECRIMINALISATION

Laws are frequently altered because they cannot be imposed or enforced. For example, the use of cannabis can be
quite open in some places in the UK, because the police choose to act. Eventually, the government has little choice
but to decriminalise such offences because it has to accept that the criminal act cannot be controlled because
people no longer take notice of the law. When crimes go unreported, often it is due to the lack of public concern and
interest, or because it is seen as a victimless crime. This includes:

 Drugs
 Prostitution
 Illegal downloads

Such actions are common, widespread crimes that people do not see as real offences so publically they become
decriminalised. Although there are still laws against them, the punishments have been reduced, and less time and
money are spent trying to find perpetrators of these crimes. In some cases these offences are even legalised.
Eventually, the government has little choice over what can and cannot be controlled. They have no choice but to
decriminalise some actions because they have to accept that people do not take notice of the law anymore/.

Task:

Watch the following documentary and answer these questions:

1. Before decriminalisation, how did the law and wider society treat gay men?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

2. Why would their crimes have been reported and recorded?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

3. What change was made to the law relating to homosexuality?

POLICE PRIORITISATION

The police often prioritise certain cries, ensuring that issues in a local area rea addressed. This means that some
crimes are not prioritised or are jot investigated. For instance, in recent years there has been a rise in the number of
sexual abuse cases, historic offences and reported domestic assault. The police have responded to the public’s
expectation for these crimes to be investigated. However, given the cost ofboth time and money on such
investigations, the police do not have the time to respond to all crime, or capacity. Hence, some offences go
unreported, as the public feel the police do not have the time due to prioritisation. Alternatively, a swifter
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punishment may be dispensed such as a caution rather than a court case. The police in County Durham have
indicated that they will no longer actively pursue smokers and small scale cannabis growers in order to prioritise
their resources against more serious crime. Ron Hogg, the county’s Police and Crime Commissioner, in 2015 stated
that this was to reduce costs and keep users out of the criminal justice system so they could focus on organised
crime and gang crime. Hate crime, especially if it is carried out on social media, is currently a crime requiring police
prioritisation.

Review:

Research Operation Yewtree from 2015, which started with the uncovering of Jimmy Saville. Answer the following
questions on your desks:

1) Why would a TV documentary lead to members of the public coming forward to report crime?
2) Why would cases involving celebrities gain greater media coverage?
3) How might police priorities be changed when the media reported cases of historical child sexual abuse ?

A new priority - social media hate crime

Hate crime has recently been a priority of the police. In 2016 a new unit was created in London’s Metropolitan Police
Force to investigate hate speech online. As part of a funded two year project the unit will be responsible for the
filtering and identification of hate crimes online, before informing regional police forces which will take action
against crimes committed online.

UNRECORDED CRIME

Unrecorded crime involves crimes that are reported to the police but are not recorded by them as offences. This
means an investigation into the alleged crime is unlikely to happen and the offender will not be punished or other
crimes prevented. Clearly, the more serious these offences are, the more serious the consequences could be.

Task:

1) To support your comments on the above, research unrecorded crime and use the statistics on different
police-force areas in your controlled assessment. This will help develop and add detail to your work.

The dark figure of crime

If the police do not record a crime, it will not appear in the police statistics. These unrecorded crimes are known as
the dark figure of crime. This is all the other crime – including the crimes no-one has witnessed, crimes that were
witnessed but not reported, and crimes that were reported to the police but not recorded by them. The absence of
unrecorded crime from the OCS means that the government and the CJS get a distorted picture of the patterns of
crime in the country, leading them to focus only on the types of crime that appear important from the statistics
while neglecting others that may be more serious.

2) Working with a partner, use the link below to search for crime in each of your local postcode areas.
https://www.police.uk/search/?next=policing%3Aforce%3Apcc%3Aindex
o What crimes, and how many of each, have been committed in your two areas in the last month?
Compare the two areas and note down similarities and differences.
o Click on the crimes and find out the status of the investigation. For example, have the offenders
been caught? Are there any differences between the two areas?
o Now look at stop and search in your two areas. Find five stop and searches for each area and note
the following:
a. Object of search
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 b. Age
c. Gender
d. Ethnicity

o Compare the data for the two areas. Are there any similarities? B. From the data you have gathered
on the two areas, write a brief summary of the findings. How successful are the police in your two
areas? What crimes are the police looking for with stop and search and are they successful?

CULTURAL CHANGE

Within our own communities it may become the culture for crimes to be committed. Crime becomes a natural
consequence of a culture shift, almost a way of life. For instance, illegal video streaming, from sports and movie
channels regularly takes place. Within a community many people may not see this as a crime, so it is not reported
and hence becomes acceptable. When an area becomes run-down, for example properties have been vandalised or
poverty turns people to petty crimes such as drug use or prostitution, the culture of the area can grow worse and
more crimes are committed because no-one is reporting them so no-one is punished, This can lead to worse crimes
such as drug dealing, rape and murder. If the area is cleaned up and smaller crimes are reported and properly dealt
with, crime rates in the area will go down.

Take it further:

Broken windows theory:

Wilson and Kelling proposed the broken windows theory, which states that unchecked and unreported minor crime
leads to further and more serious crime, for example an uncared for area of a town begins to act as a magnet for
delinquent behaviour. Thus, they claimed that all crime should be tackled to avoid proliferation of further crime.

What do you think? Does this theory make sense and if so, why?

LEGAL CHANGE

Crimes may go unreported for a long time because they are perceived as human rights. For example, homosexuality
was illegal within the UK for many years. As the stigma towards homosexuality reduced, legal changes have been
made e.g. same sex marriage was legalised in 2015. Similarly, there has been substantial legal change towards the
smoking of cigarettes. At one stage smoking cigarettes was glamorised in the movies and even encouraged by the
medical profession. However, as medical knowledge in this area has improved the risks of smoking prompted
change. In 2007 smoking in enclosed public spaces became illegal and in 2015 it became illegal to smoke in a car with
anyone under the age of 18. These were positive consequences from legal change.

PROCEDURAL CHANGE

The actual procedural way of reporting crime has developed over the years to encourage reporting to take place.
Traditionally, visiting the police station or in an emergency, phoning 999 were common methods of reporting a
crime. Now other procedures have been introduced to report crime to the police. Some groups such as victim
support can help people report offences. It is even possible to report crime anonymously through crime stoppers.
There are specialised teams of police that deal with certain crimes such as hate crime, terrorism, fraud or anti-social
behaviour. There are also several apps that can be downloaded to a mobile phone to allow quick access to the

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police. IN addition, some makes of mobile phones can connect to the police by shaking them or quick pressing of the
on/off button. These are positive consequences from procedural change.

Controlled assessment preparation

What you have to do

Using your notes from Topic 1.3 Explain the consequences of unreported crime, give a clear and detailed explanation
including relevant examples, of the following consequences of unreported crimes:

 Ripple affect
 Cultural consequences
 Decriminalisation
 Police prioritisation
 Unrecorded crime
 Cultural change
 Legal change
 Procedural change

You should have an understanding of the positive and negative effects of unreported crime on the individual and on
society.

When a consequence you are explaining also appears in the brief, you should make reference to it and keep doing so
throughout your writing. Always refer to the brief!!

Marks available:

3-4: Clear and detailed explanation including relevant examples of the consequences of unreported crimes.

You will have 25 minutes to complete this section.

AC1.4
Assessment criteria Content Amplification
AC1.4 Describe media Media • newspaper • television • film • Learners should have knowledge
representation of crime electronic gaming • social media (blogs, of specific examples of how
social networking) • music different forms of media are used
to portray fictional and factual
representations of crime.

NEWSPAPERS

A vast amount of newspaper space is devoted to crime stories such as stabbings, shootings, murder and terrorist
attacks. On a typical day, articles throughout a range of newspapers are related to reporting current crimes or
concerned with the impact of crime. This relates to both local and national newspapers. When a major incident
occurs, the front pages of all newspapers and many sections inside contain the latest pictures and reports from the
event. The August 2017 terrorist attacks in Barcelona were reported on the pages of all British newspapers, with
dramatic headlines using words such as ‘massacre’, bloodbath’, ‘evil’, ‘terror’, ‘Barcelona Bastards’ and ‘Slaughtered
on the streets’. It is interesting that both tabloid and broadsheet newspapers reported this in a similar style. While
terrorist attacks are atrocities and must never be condoned, it is interesting to note that often the media will
sensationalise crime or over-exaggerate the event. Reporting often takes place in dramatic terms with a focus on the
negative aspects, as if to scaremonger.

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Task:

Look how the The Times and The Sun reported on the 2017 Barcelona terror attacks – did they use different
language?

TELEVISION

Television plays a major role in the portrayal of crime by the media. TV is used to portray both fictional and factual
representations of crime. Crimewatch and Police Camera Action are examples of factual programmes, there have
been many dramas based on high profile crimes such as Little Boy Blue, based on the murder of Rhys Jones in 2007,
and the Moorside based on the kidnap of Shannon Matthews in 2008. There have also been many fictional crime
shows such as the Bill, Law and Order, Sherlock and Midsomer Murders. According to Tim Newburn 2007, about
1/10th of prime time TV is concerned with crime and law enforcement from the 1950s. This has since increased, and
is now roughly ¼ of all output being devoted to crime.

However, the kinds of crimes, criminals and victims that appear in newspapers are in many ways the opposite of
those that appear in the OCS. The criminologist Surette calls this ‘law of opposites’ i.e. crimes are more likely to be
deemed newsworthy if they fit key news values.

News values

Criteria that journalists and editors use to decide whether a story is newsworthy enough to make it into the paper or
news bulletin:

 Immediacy
 Dramatisation
 Personalisation
 Higher-status persons
 Simplification
 Novelty or unexpectedness
 Risk
 Violence

Review:

Look at any TV guide, how many programmes are crime related?

FILMS

Films have a huge impact on the way people see crimes and the facts and fictions surrounding them. Films such as
Suicide Squad, Die Hard, Human Centipede and The Wolf of Wall Street are all films that have a main focus on crime
and corruption.

Watch the following and take notes about how crime and criminals are represented in film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEddtexPCsod

ELECTRONIC GAMING

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A form of media that is used to represent the fictional side of crime is gaming. The majority of crim games are aimed
at over 18s. However, games can often trivialise crime, suggesting that violence is acceptable of crime appropriate.
Grand Theft Auto is an example of a crime game, it encourages the players to steal cars, meet prostitutes and kill
people for game points.

Review:

How many words can you find that represent how the media can over-exaggerate crime? For example, scaremonger
glorify etc.

Write down your answers.

SOCIAL MEDIA

The reporting of crime often appears on social media. Members of the public can raise awareness of crimes through
postings. Police force areas have Facebook and Twitter pages that allow increasing public awareness of particular
crimes. They can also be used to enable the public to see what criminals are doing in their area or to make pleas for
information form witnesses.

Task – performance crimes:

Social media has created a new form of crime which involves the criminal act being broadcast on social media. These
‘performance’ crimes may be with or without consent or knowledge of the offender. Some criminals accept having
their actions filmed for streaming on social network sites and often behave like actors in a film when committing the
crime. Perpetrators may also use tweets and other social media posts to broadcast future crimes. The popularity of
celebrities and celebrity status mean that performance crimes are often committed with a view to becoming well
known. Some criminals also post videos of planned crimes to heighten interest before they commit and post the
actual crime.

Working with a partner, visit the link below and complete the following:

https://www.vocativ.com/underworld/crime/16-year-old-live-tweeted-bomb-threats-3-monthsgot-arrested/

1. What crime did the 16-year-old @ProbablyOnion commit?

2. How many times had he committed the crime before he was caught?

3. How did he publicise the crimes he had committed?

4. How did the police determine that @Probably Onion and @ProbablyOnion2 were behind the crimes?

B. What other types of crimes might be used as performance crimes?

C. Why might performance crimes be a problem for police to investigate?

D. What might be the advantages for police when investigating these types of crime?

E. In your view, are performance crimes more like crime news or more like crime drama? Give your reasons.

MUSIC

Many songs throughout the decades have been devoted to crime or criminals e.g. ‘I fought the law’ by the Clash,
Eminem has made many songs that refer to crime, sex and drugs and Nirvana’s Polly is also based on crime. This
happens worldwide, for example B.A.P a Korean boyband often use the concept of murder, theft and kidnapping in
their music videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiCo_uUD2SY

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Controlled assessment preparation

What you have to do

Use your notes from Topic 1.4 Describe media representations of crime, give a detailed description of the media
representation of crime, including relevant examples:

Media:

 Newspapers
 Television
 Film
 Electronic gaming
 Social media
 Music

You should have knowledge of specific examples of how different forms of media are used to portray fictional and
factual representations of crime.

As much as possible, you should refer to the brief.

Marks available:

4-6 marks: Detailed description of the media representation of crime, including relevant examples.

You will have approximately 35 minutes for this section.

Assessment criteria Content Amplification

AC1.5 Explain the impact of media moral panic • changing public concerns Learners should be familiar with
representations on the public and attitudes • perceptions of crime specific examples of media
perception of crime trends • stereotyping of criminals • portrayal of criminality and the
levels of response to crime and types of range of impacts given.
punishment • changing priorities and Understanding of those impacts
emphasis should be based on theories.

THE IMPACT OF MEDIA PORTRAYALS OF CRIME

How the media portray crime and criminals has a big impact on how the public perceives crime. Media coverage can
affect how much crime people believe there is, whether they think it is increasing, and how much of a threat they
feel it is. In turn, this may lead the public to demand that the police courts of government take steps to deal with the
perceived problem, such as crackdown on a particular type of crime or the introduction of new laws.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0HZG7631xM

MORAL PANIC

The media’s representation of crime may actually cause more crime by creating a moral panic. Stanley Cohen defines
a moral panic as an exaggerated, irrational over-reaction by society to a perceived problem. It starts with the media
identifying a group as a folk devil or threat to society’s values, exaggerating the problems real seriousness with
sensationalised reporting. The media, politicians and other respectable figures ten condemn the group’s
misbehaviour and call for a crackdown by the authorities, however, this can actually make matters worse. By
amplifying the scale of the problem that caused the panic in the first place
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Case study – The Mods and Rockers.

Cohens book Folk Devils and Moral panics is a classic study if this process. Cohen examines how the media’s
response to disturbances between two groups of w/c youths, the mods and rockers created a moral panic. Initially,
differences between the two were not clear cut and not many young people identified themselves as belonging to
either group. The disturbances started on a wet Easter weekend in 1964 at the resort of Clacton, with a few scuffles
and some minor property damage. However, the media’s over-reaction triggered a moral panic. This involved three
elements:

1) Exaggeration and distortion of the numbers involved and seriousness of the trouble and sensationalising
their behaviour
2) Prediction that further conflict and violence would occur
3) Symbolisation - of the mods ad rockers, such as their clothes, hairstyles and bokes/scooters were negatively
labelled.

Watch the following and identify the three elements:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r61ks18Bd7I

The deviance amplification spiral:

Wilkins argues that the media can produce a deviance amplification spiral – a process where attempts by the
authorities’ to control deviance actually produce more deviance, not less, leading to further attempts at control and
more deviance. In the case of the mods and rockers:

 Media coverage made it appear that the problem was getting out of hand and this lead to calls for a stronger
‘control response’ or crackdown from the police and courts. This increased the stigmatisation of the mods
and rockers as criminals.
 The media emphasised this supposed differences between the two groups. This encouraged more youths to
identify with one group and see the other as their enemy, fuelling further clashes. This created a self-
fulfilling prophecy where youths acted out the roles the media had assigned them, increasing the scale of
the disturbance and making the authorities respond with tougher sentences.

Since the mods and rockers there have been numerous other folk devils and moral panics, examples include drug
use, homosexuality, HIV/AIDs, Islamist terrorism, football hooliganism, child sexual abuse, welfare scroungers and
asylum seekers.

Review

1) How might media reporting of an increase in knife crime cause deviance amplification spiral?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

2) How might the media report the problem without causing amplification?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________

CHANGING PUBLIC CONCERNS AN ATTITUDES

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As the mods and rockers case shows, media representations of certain groups can change public attitudes by
triggering a moral panic. Media portrayals of the mods and rockers as folk devils led to anxiety among the public that
youths were out of control. Since the Islamist terrorist attacks on the IS in 2001, media reporting of Islam and
Muslims has been largely negative. This has contributed to a change in public attitudes ad especially in Islamophobia
in the general population. This may account for the rise in hate crimes against Muslims in recent years.

PERCEPTIONS OF CRIME TRENDS

Is crime increasing? Decreasing or staying the same?

Are particular types of crime increasing? Or becoming less frequent?

In general, the public seem more likely to believe that crime is on the increase e.g. the CSEW found that during
2017/18, 72% of people thought that crime had increased, while 43% thought crime had increased locally.

The effect of the media:

This difference between national and local figures is significant. We have first-hand knowledge of our own area, but
we rely on the media to tell us what is going on nationally = as we saw in topic 1.4 the media covers crime a lot,
especially violent crime.

Fear of crime:

One impact of the perception that crime is riding is an increased fear of becoming a victim. This can be caused by the
media over-reporting certain crimes, such as violent attacks. As a result, women and the elderly are more likely to
fear becoming a victim. Yet in reality, it is young males who are most at risk of being attacked. Likewise, over-
reporting of crimes against children, such as abductions and sexual abuse or violence by paedophiles, may make
parents fearful of allowing their children to go out unsupervised. Again, children are at more risk from their family
members than strangers. Research by Tumbler and Schlesinger, has shown that tabloid newspaper readers and
heavy TV users have a greater fear of being victimised. However, in some cases people’s perceptions of increased
crime is accurate. Some local areas have rising crime rates and residents may have been victims or know friends who
have been. In this case, their fear may be based on personal experience rather than media perceptions.

STEREOTYPING OF CRIMINALS

A stereotype is an oversimplified generalisation or label applied to a whole group of people e.g. young people are
lazy. Stereotyping can play a major part in which types the CJS pay attention to.

Typifications:

According to Cicourel, the police, judges, probation officers and prosecutors have stereotypes of the typical
delinquent. Cicourel calls these typifications. He found that police officers saw the typical delinquent as having the
following characteristics:

 Young, lower class males, often unemployed

 Often black or minority ethnic background
 From a ‘rough’ neighbourhood
 Bad attitude
 A poor educational record
 Associating with others known to the police

Self-fulfilling prophecy:

The police use these typifications to make decisions about where to patrol, who to stop and question and whether
to arrest someone or not. Those who fit into the typifications are more likely to get arrested and convicted, leading
to police officers to believe that they need to watch out for these types. Meanwhile, offenders who don’t fit the
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typifications are more likely to be ignored e.g. white collar criminals. Like the police, the public too form stereotypes
based on media portrayals of the typical criminal. As a result, they may be sensitised to any misbehaviour by these
groups.

Task:

1. Make a list of characteristics most people would think of for the ‘typical criminal’. This may include age, social
class, gender, ethnicity and other characteristics. You could ask relatives or friends who are not studying criminology
for their image of the typical criminal. (You may also like to consider why they hold these images.)

2. Look back at Topic 1.1. For each of the different types of crime, who are the typical offenders?

3. Which of those offenders match the ‘typical criminal’ image in Question 1 and which ones do not? Why might
there be differences or similarities?

Present your group’s answers to questions 1-3 to the whole class and compare them. What similarities or differences
are there with other groups’ answers? Summarise whether your class findings confirm ideas about the ‘typical
criminal’

LEVELS OF REPSOONSE TO CRIME AND TYPES OF PUNISHMENT

The media can affect the levels of response to crime by the police and the punishment handed out by the courts. We
can look at the 2011 riots to exemplify this.

The riots began following the death of Mark Duggan by the MET police. Rioting began and quickly spread to ther
parts of the country. According to Simon Rogers, the sentences imposed on those convicted were disproportionately
harsh.

Youth courts gave custodial sentences to 32% of those convicted, compared with only 5% for those convicted of
similar offences in 2010.

Magistrate’s courts sent 37% of those convicted to jail, compared with only 12% for similar cases in 2010.

Crown courts sent 82% of those convicted to jail, compared with only 33% of similar cases in 2010. Sentences were
eight months longer on average.

Commenting on such sentences, the former chair of the criminal bar association, Mendelle QC said there is a danger
that the courts may get caught up in a kind of collective hysteria and go over the top and hand out sentences that
are too long.

The media’s role:

The media played a major part in setting the tone for the harsher sentences e.g., the Daily Mail described the rioters
as ‘illiterate and innumerate’, ‘wild beasts’ who ‘respond only to instinctive animal impulses’. At the same time, most
of the media made little attempt to examine the underlying causes of the riots.

Review:

1) Why do you think the sentences for the rioters were severe?
2) Why would the media focus on the riots and rioters rather than the causes of the riots?

Moral entrepreneurs:

We saw earlier that moral panics feature calls for a crackdown on the folk devils - Becker calls these moral
entrepreneur’s. They can be an individual or pressure group who lead a moral crusade, for example about alcohol,
pornography or mods and rockers. They claim the issue is serious and use the media to crackdown on the issue, by
demanding harsher sentences for example. They often come from the higher classes, and frequently include

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politicians, police officers and professionals. In the case of both the mods and rockers and riots moral entrepreneurs
were quoted, interviewed or provided their ideas for solutions within the media.

Task:

Watch the following and consider who is acting as a moral entrepreneur?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUmZGzlhaXw

CHANGING PRIORITIES AND EMPHASIS

When the media voice concern about a particular type of crime or anti-social behaviour, it may lead to changes in
the priorities or policies of government, the police and other agencies. It may even lead to new laws being
introduced. Two examples in priorities that led to changes in the law are the issues of dangerous dogs and illegal
raves.

Dangerous dogs:

In 1990 and 1991, the tabloid newspapers carried reports on Rottweilers and pit bull terriers that had mauled and in
some cases killed children. The language used was sensational and emotive – ‘savaged’, ‘muzzled’, coverage also
included gory photographs of the victims. Media coverage labelling pit bulls as devil dogs encouraged the view that
they posed a widespread and serious threat. This led to calls for something to be done and criticisms of the lack of
action from John Major’s Government. As a result, the Home Secretary Kenneth Baker felt it necessary to push
emergency legislation through parliament. The DDA (dangerous dogs act) became law in August 1991.

The DDA made it illegal to own, breed or sell pit bulls and three other breeds. Dogs found would be destroyed and
the owner jailed for up to 6 months.

Politics – Another factor causing change in the government’s priorities was the political situation at the time. Baker
had been severely criticised for his handling of the prison riots in the previous year. By responding quickly to media
and public demands he could show that he was a man of action, so a quick win with a popular policy looked very
attractive.

Criticisms of the DDA:

The DDA has been widely criticised as a knee-jerk reaction to tabloid headlines. One critic describes it as a class
example of what not to do. The DDA was a response to a moral panic that exaggerated the dangers. Deaths caused
by dog attacks are actually very rare – there were only 3o deaths in the first 25 years after the DDA was passed and
21 of these were by dogs not named in the act.

‘Blame the deed, not the breed’

One problem with the DDA is in deciding whether a dog is a pit bull or not. Critics also argue that destroying dogs
just because of their breed is a form of doggy genocide. They claim we should blame the deed, not the breed’ and
the law should target irresponsible owners, not the dogs. In fact, as Baker admitted, there are more reported dog
bites by some other breeds than by pit bulls, but if he has put dogs such as Alsatians and Dobermans in the same
category, it would have infuriated the green welly brigade of middle class conservative voters. Critics such as Lodge
and Hood argue that there is a canine class issue here. Pit bull owners have been labelled and stigmatised by the
media as irresponsible, lower class chavs living on council estates. The dogs themselves have been portrayed as a
macho status symbol favoured by gang members and drug dealers.

Illegal raves:

The media also played a major part in changing government and police priorities in relation to illegal raves. ‘Rave
culture’ first emerged in the late 1980s, characterised by taking the drug ecstasy and dancing to acid house music at
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raves. Initial media reaction was fairly favourable, with the sun selling smiley face t-shirts and describing acid house
as ‘groovy and cool’. However, the first signs of a moral panic began to emerge with the sun warning about
hallucinations and suggesting that you might end up in a mental hospital.

BBC documentaries made exaggerated claims about the dangers of ecstasy. According to Sam Bradpiece, the BBC
repeatedly demonised rave culture as a threat to society, justifying a tough response from the government and law.

Change in the law:

Finally the government changed the law specifically to stop raves. The 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act
applies to open-air gatherings of 100 or more people where amplified music with repetitive beats is played at night
and is likely to cause distress to local residents.

Politics:

As well as the role of the media in changing priorities in the law, politics also played a part. The hedonistic culture of
the rave scene was sharply opposed to the values of the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John
Major, which emphasised self-discipline, hard work and individualism.

Controlled assessment preparation

What you have to do

Using your notes from topic 1.5, Explain the impact of media representations on the public perception of crime, give a
clear detailed explanation of the impact of a range of media representations on the public perception of crime.

Impact:

 Moral panic
 Changing public concerns and attitudes
 Perceptions of crime trends
 Stereotyping of criminals
 Levels fo response to crine and types oif punishment
 Changing prioritioes and emphasis

The assignment brief scenario

Refer to the brief as much as possible when answering the question.

Marks available:

4-6 marks: Clear and detailed explanation of the impact of a range of media representations on the public
perception of crime.

You will have approximately 35 minutes for this section.

Assessment criteria Content Amplification

AC1.6 Evaluate methods of collecting • reliability • validity • ethics of Learners should evaluate the
crime statistics about crime. research • strengths and limitations • methods used to collect and
purpose of research Information about present the two sources of
crime • Home Office statistics • crime information about crime given in
survey for England and Wales the content. The evaluation
should use the criteria specified
in the content.

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Task:

Write down you answers to the following questions:

1. What sources might you use to obtain information about crime levels in the area?
2. What would be the advantages or disadvantages of these sources?

Two sources of crime statistics:

How much crime is there, and how do we know? What can crime statistics tell us? Criminologists have two main
sources of statistics to crime:

 Home office statistics – police recorded crime

 The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) – a survey of victims of crime.

In this topic, we shall examine these two sources of crime statistics and evaluate their usefulness.

HOME OFFICE STATISTICS: POLICE RECORDED CRIME

The UK has 43 regional police forces plus the British Transport Police. Every month each force reports to the Home
Office the number of crimes they have recorded in their area. These figures are sent to the Office for National
Statistics, who publish final statistics for the whole country. The statistics cover all notifiable offences – that is all
crimes that could be tried by a jury plus some less serious crimes that are tried by a magistrate, such as assault
without injury. In addition to the national crime statistics, each police force publishes statistics for its area. You can
also find crime statistics and crime maps for your local area online.

RELIABILITY:

Reliability refers to whether a method for collecting information about something gives the same result if used by a
different person. If a method is reliable, then when it is repeated by someone else, it gives the same consistent
result.

Strength Limitation
Police recorded crime statistics are generally regarded However, it is possible for different officers to classify
as being reliable because all officers follow the same the same incident differently. E.g. some crimes might
procedures, use the same definitions of crimes etc. be subjective e.g. assault.
Likewise, different forces may define a crime differently
e.g., one might have policy of not reporting thefts of
less than £10 and another, £20.
Reliability also refers to accuracy, so errors can be
made when recording the details of a crime or a victim.

VALIDITY

Validity refers to whether the statistics give us a true picture of the amount of crime. Police recorded crime statistics
may not do so e.g. the police recorded just over 45,000 rapes in 2016-17 but this understates the true number as
victims might fail to report it and police record it.

Recorded crime figures do not include:

 Crimes that have not been reported to the police: according to the CSEW, people only report about 40% of
the crimes they have been victims of.
 Incidents that the police decide not to record as crimes. They only record about 60% of the crimes that
people report to them.

Reasons for under-reporting:

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For a crime to be reported, a victim or witness must first of all believe a crime has occurred. For example, you may
not notice an item has gone missing, or you may think you lost it rather than that someone has stolen it.

Even if you believe a crime has occurred, there are many reasons why you may not report it:

 If a stolen item was of low value or uninsured e.g. cars are often high value and most are insured, so car
thefts generally do not get reported.
 You may have no faith in the police: you may see them as incompetent or unhelpful.
 You may feel embarrassed or ashamed: e.g. because you have failed to take sensible precautions to avoid
being a victim.
 Fear of reprisals from the offender.
 You may prefer to deal with it yourself: e.g. if a relative steals from you, you may not want to get them in
trouble with the police.
 You may fear getting into trouble yourself: e.g. if you have been illegally trafficked, you may not want to
report that you have been abused.

Thinking time:

Using the reasons given for the under-reporting of crime by victims and/or witnesses, plus any other reasons that
you think might apply, decide why the following offences might not be reported to the police:

a. soliciting for prostitution

b. vandalism

c. people trafficking

d. possession of cannabis

e. rape

f. littering

g. under-age sex

h. burglary

i. gang fights

j. child abuse

k. ‘honour’ crimes

l. shopkeepers short-changing customers

m. hacking bank accounts

n. domestic violence.

2. Which of these offences do you think are least likely to be reported? Try to rank the crimes in order of their
likelihood of being reported.

B. In your own words, briefly explain why under-reporting would make the crime statistics less valid.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

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_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Reasons for under-recording:

Once a crime is reported, the police must decide whether or not to record it. Police have some discretion about
whether to record a crime and may choose not to do so for several reasons:

 They may not believe the victim’s story

 They may not have enough evidence to secure conviction
 The victim may refuse to press charges
 The incident may not in fact be a crime
 They may regard the crime as trivial or a waste of police time and resources
 The particular type of crime may not be a priority for them
 They may not want to record crime they know they cannot solve. This will increase their clear-up rate –
instead of going into the statistics of unsolved crimes.

Again, for the crimes listed above (a-n), discuss why these crimes might not be recorded by the police. Try to rank
the crimes in order of the likelihood of being recorded:

Both under-reporting and recording of crime make the Home Office statistics that are based on police recorded
crime less valid – that is, not a wholly true picture of the amount of crime actually committed.

Representativeness of problems – Some types of crime are less likely to be reported or recorded than others and this
distorts the picture still further. E.g. if very few rapes are reported but almost all of burglaries are reported, then the
statistics will not give a truly representative picture of the relative frequency of the different crimes.

Policy problems – Therefore, if the government and criminal justice system relied on the Home Office statistics for
their picture of crime, this could lead them to make policies to tackle only the types of crime that appear important,
while neglecting more serious and unreported crimes.

The dark figure of crime:

The unreported crimes, plus all the crimes that are reported but the police don’t record are known as the dark figure
of crime. Another way of describing this situation is the iceberg analogy. With an iceberg floating in the ocean, only
part is visible; this is the recorded crimes in the statistics. The rest of the iceberg is invisible, below the surface. This
is all the other crime – the ones no one has witnessed, the ones that were witnessed but not reported to the police
and the ones that were reported but not recorded by them.
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The dark figure is the most serious disadvantage of using police statistics. It is the main reason why they lack validity
and why the Office for National Statistics decided in 2014 that police recorded crime statistics do not come up to the
required standard for official statistics in the UK.

Read the following article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25831906

ETHICS FOR RESEARCH

Ethics refers to issues or morality or right and wrong. In research on crime, it includes issues such as whether an
offender or victim’s right to privacy and anonymity are protected. Because individual offenders and victims are not
identifiable from the Home Office statistics, only overall numbers of offences, there is no ethical issue of breaching a
person’s privacy. E.g. individual rape victims cannot be identified from the statistics, only the total number of rapes
recorded by police.

Purpose of research:

If the purpose of the statistics collected by the police is to give a valid and reliable picture of the amount of crime,
then they fail on this score. Likewise, since the statistics only tell us about crimes, they are of no help in
understanding other issues, such as fear of crime – e.g. whether it is increasing or who is most likely to be in fear.

However, the police statistics can be useful in other ways:

 As a measure of police activity – the statistics tell us about police activity and priorities e.g. if they have
formed special squads to deal with knife crime. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean more crime has
been committed just that the police have been actively uncovering it.
 As an indicator if crime trends – if the number of recorded knife crimes goes up from one year to the next,
this may indicate that there is a real change going on out there. Of course, statistics can only tell us this if the
police haven’t stepped up their attempts to catch more of these offenders in the meantime.
 Well reported and recorded crimes – Police statistics are a good measure for crimes where we can be
confident that most of the crimes do not get reported or recorded, such as homicides. Likewise, most car
thefts get reported, because most motorists are insured and to claim on their insurance must have reported
the theft to the police.

OTHER STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS

There are several other issues to take into account when evaluating the usefulness of Home Office statistics based
on police recorded crime.

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Activity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsWSQwcSUZM

Watch the clip and answer the following questions:

1. How many crimes are going unrecorded each year? What percentage is this of all crime?

2. What percentage of rapes and sexual offences are unrecorded? Why do you think this is of ‘especially serious
concern’?

3. What is ‘no-criming’? How many rapes are subject to this?

4. What is the impact of targets for the police?

5. What percentage of police felt pressured not to record crime in the last 12 months?

6. Which four forces had the worst problem of not recording crime?

7. How might public confidence in statistics be restored?

THE CRIME SURVEY FOR ENGLAND AND WALES

The CSEW offers an alternative to the Home Office police recorded crime. The CSEW is a victim survey that asks a
sample of people each year about what crimes they have been victims of in the preceding 12 months. The CSEW is
one of the largest social surveys conducted in the UK, with around 50,000 people interviewed each year. It asks
household residents about their experiences of crime in face-to-face interviews.

RELIABILITY:

Strength Limitation
Because the CSEW is conducted by trained interviewers However, it is possible for different interviewers to get
asking the same set of questions, the results are likely different answers to the same question. E.g. a male and
to have high reliability. A person’s answers are likely to female interviewer asking the same female interviewee
be the same regardless of who is asking the questions, about sexual assault might get quite different
so results will tend to be consistent. responses, so the results may not be completely
reliable.

Thinking time:

Apart from gender, what other characteristics of the interviewer affect how an interviewee responds to the
question?

VALIDITY:

Strength Limitation
The great advantage of the CSEW is that it uncovers a However, because the CSEW is based on interviewee’s
lot of crime that has not been reported to the police. answers to questions, it relies on the victim’s memory,
This makes it a valuable way of getting information honesty and willingness to provide information.
about the dark figure of unreported crime and thus However, a victim may be unwilling to report some
producing more valid stats. E.g. the survey shows that crimes due to embarrassment or a feeling of their
people don’t report about 40% of crimes they were privacy being invaded or be unable to remember some
victims of and therefore these offences stand no crimes, or may misremember them, especially if they
chance of entering the official stats. involved traumatic experiences.
They might also be unaware that an incident was a
crime – people may not define crimes in the same way

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 as the survey does or, they could be unaware that they
have been a victim. This all reduces the validity.

Two other problems of validity:

1. Not all victims are included – The CSEW doesn’t cover people living in institutions e.g, prions and childrens
homes, where there have been frequent examples of abuse. The homeless, who face higher levels of abuse
are also excluded. Until recently it didn’t cover children living at home, there is now a separate survey for 10-
15 year olds.
2. Not all crimes are included – As the CSEW is a victim survey, it cannot record crimes where there has been
no specific individual victim to interview. It therefore doesn’t include:
o Crimes where the victim is the government, such as tax fraud or benefit fraud
o Crimes against businesses or other organisations
o Homicides – the victim is by definition unable to report the crime
o Crimes where the victim is also the criminal e.g. drug abuse

All these victims and crimes remain part of the dark figure and so results are not fully valid.

Ethics of research:

There are very few ethical problems with the CSEW:

 There is no obligation to take part – individuals can refuse to participate or to answer particular questions if
they feel uncomfortable.
 Interviews are anonymous and confidential – so individuals cannot be identified in the survey’s results.
Information given is destroyed after the statistics are produced, and is not shared with other organisation

However, being a victim of crime is often traumatic and some people may experience distress in recalling incidents in
an interview with a stranger.

Purpose of interview:

A major strength of the SCEW is that its purpose is to focus in victims’ experiences:

 It gathers information about the sorts of crimes people are most concerned about, such as violence and
property crimes.
 It helps to give a picture of people’s day-to-day experience of crime and its effects on their lives
 By giving a victims eye view, its gives us a more valid picture of the impact of crime than police statistics can.
 Its findings can be used in crime reduction programmes by identifying the groups and areas most at risk of
being victims

Other strengths and limitations:

Representativeness – The CSEW has a very high response rate, with about three quarters agreeing to take part, so its
results are quite representative of the population as a whole. Nevertheless, those who refuse may be different in
some way from those who agree to take part. E.g. they may have a more traumatic experience of crime. If so, the
final results may not be fully representative of the population. Also, although the sample is large, it may not be big
enough to give a representative picture of less frequent but very serious crime.

Task:

Answer the following questions:

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1. In what ways might some people’s particular experiences of crime make them less likely to take part in the
survey?

2. For what other reasons might someone refuse to take part in an interview, whatever the interview was about (for
example, if the survey was about their shopping habits, political opinions or religious beliefs)?

3. Why might some people be particularly keen to take part in a survey about being a victim? How might this affect
the representativeness of the survey’s overall results?

Differences between crime levels according to different sources:

The CSEW consistently records more crimes than the police statistics and sometimes the two measures of crime give
different pictures of whether it is increasing or decreasing. The differences between the two are mainly due to
differences in reporting – the CSEW is able to capture crime that goes unreported to the police.

Which measure is more useful?

Despite its shortcomings, such as not including certain crimes, the CSEW is the more useful of the two measures of
crime. As we have seen, the ONS decided that police statistics do not come up the required standard for UK
government statistics. As John Flatley of the ONS said, ‘the CSEW remains our best guide to long-term trends for
trends of crime as experienced by the population in general’.

Other sources of information:

Apart from the OCS and CSEW, there are other sources:

1. Statistics on convicted criminals – These statistics only tell us about people who have been found guilty, this
measures those failed criminals not the ones that got away.
2. Self-report studies – ask people what crimes have been committed. They are conducted by confidential and
anonymous questionnaires or interviews, so there are no major ethical issues. Anonymity also helps to
ensure that people answer truthfully. They are useful in uncovering victimless crimes such as drug abuse.
One finding of self-report studies is that there is little difference between the social classes or ethnic group
in levels of offending – suggesting the higher levels of black people and lower classes suggests they are more
likely to be convicted rather than commit the crimes more often. However, respondents might not be
completely truthful. Some fear incriminating themselves, while others might boast of crimes they haven’t
actually committed. However, evidence suggests that about 80% of respondents tell the truth. A further
problem is that self-report studies don’t generally ask about more serious crimes, if they did the respondents
might be less truthful.
3. Crimes against businesses – The Commercial Victimisation Survey looks at crimes against businesses such as
online crime, vandalism, burglary, theft and assaults. This fills a gap left by the CSEW, which only covers
crime against residents of households.

Controlled assessment preparation:

What you have to do:

Using your notes from topic 1.6 Evaluate methods of collecting statistics about crime, evaluate Home Office statistics
and the Crime Survey for England and Wales as sources of information about crime.

Use the following criteria in your evaluation:

 Reliability
 Validity
 Ethics of research
 Strengths and limitations

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  Purpose of research

Marks available:

4-6 marks: clear and detailed evaluation of a range of methods/sources of information used to collect information
about crime with clear evidence of reasoning. Detailed and relevant reference to specific sources.

In your controlled assessment you will have approximately 35 minutes to complete this section

TOPIC 2.1

COMPARE CAMPAIGNS FOR CHANGE

Assessment criteria Content Amplification

AC2.1 Compare campaigns for Campaigns for change, e.g. • change in Learners should be aware that
change policy • change in law • change in campaigns for change may have
priorities of agencies • change in different purposes. Learners
funding • change in awareness • change should compare examples of
in attitude campaigns for change and
examine their effectiveness in
achieving their objectives.
Campaigns could include, for
example, classification of drugs,
euthanasia, abortion, smoking,
etc.

CAMPAIGNS FOR CHANGE

Members of a society may want to bring about a change of some kind. They can do this by getting others to agree
with what they want. This may be done by campaigning on an issue. In this topic, we examine the purposes of
campaigns for change.

Campaigns for change often aim to change laws and/or policies.

Policies – are the plans and actions of government departments and agencies, such as the police and courts, schools
and colleges.

Laws – Policies are usually based on Laws introduced by government and passed by Parliament. Laws provide the
framework within which government agencies operate. They set out the standards, procedures and principles that
government agencies must follow to carry out the government’s policies e.g. the law lays down the circumstances
under which the police can legally carry out a stop and search.

Campaigns to change policy:

Some campaigns for change are focused on changing policies. These campaigns will often be directed at political
parties and at the government, but also other organisations. By influencing the view of political parties, campaigners
will hope to bring about change more quickly.

An example – Unlock:

One example of an organisation campaigning to bring about change in policy is Unlock. Unlock was set up to help
people who have a criminal conviction. Unlock is a charity that provides a voice and support for people with criminal
convictions who are facing disadvantages because of their criminal record. Unlock has two goals:

21
 1. To help ex-offenders move on with their lives by empowering them with information, advice and
support to overcome the stigma of their previous convictions.
2. To promote a fairer and more inclusive society by challenging discriminatory practices against those with
convictions and by promoting socially just alternatives.

A key approach of Unlock is ‘ear to the ground, voice at the top’, meaning that it listens to those needing changed,
while working with those who are able to bring about that change. A major aim of Unlock is to change policies that
limit the opportunities for people with a criminal record, e.g. in employment. Although there are laws preventing
people with certain kinds of conviction from taking up jobs such as working with children, this is not true for most
occupations. In most cases, it is at the employer’s discretion whether to take on someone with a criminal conviction,
yet many refuse to employ ex-offenders. Unlock campaigns to persuade employers to change their policies and
employ individuals who have a conviction.

Campaigning methods:

Unlock uses a wide range of campaigning methods, including the following:

 It has a website and blog which can be accessed by the public and where people can sign up to receive
newletters.
 It makes media appearances to publicise its campaigns
 It carries out and publishes research in areas of concern for those with criminal convictions

Unlocks success:

Unlock has had many successes in changing policy in relation to offenders. In 2005, Unlock identified the problem of
people coming out of prison who had managed to get jobs, but were losing these opportunities because they didn’t
have a bank account to get their wages paid into. Unlock campaigned for 9 years working with prisons and banks. By
2014, nearly 6,000 bank accounts had been opened for people in prison, ready for them to use once they were
released. 114 prisons now have links with a high-street bank. All prisons that wanted a bank account opening
programme had one in place by the end of the project.

CAMPAIGNS TO CHANGE LAW

Some campaigns are aimed at changing existing law because campaigners feel there is some problem with it. Other
campaigns aim to introduce a new law in an area of public concern.

An example: Sarah’s Law

An example of a campaign to achieve a change in the law was the successful campaign for ‘Sarah’s Law’. This Law
allows people to ask police if a person who has access to a specific child has convictions for child sex offences. The
new law was partly the result of a successful campaign by Sarah’s mother, Sara Payne.

The background:

The campaign to introduce Sarah’s Law came as a result of the abduction and murder of 8 year old Sarah Payne in
2000. Sarah was killed by a previously convicted paedophile who lived in the area. The campaign was started by
Sarah’s mother, who wanted to raise awareness of the fact that those with convictions for crimes against children
could be living in an area without the knowledge of parents. Her campaign focused on changing the law so that
parents would be able to have access to details of anyone living in their area who has a conviction for crimes against
children.

The campaign for Sarah’s Law followed a similar campaign in America in the 1990s to introduce Megan’s Law, which
had been successful in changing legislation to allow the public knowledge of convicted sex offenders in their area.

MEDIA SUPPORT

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Key to Sara’s campaign was support from the News of the World, a tabloid newspaper. In July 2000, the paper
published the names and photographs of nearly 50 people it claimed had committed child sex offences and pledged
to carry on until it had ‘named and shamed’ every paedophile in Britain.

The News of the World publicising the campaign and the resulting actions from the ‘name and shame’ campaign
increased the profile of Sara’s campaign.

SUCCESS

The campaign’s success can be seen from the implementation of the Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme, or
Sarah’s Law across England and Wales. A similar scheme operates in Scotland. Sarah’s Law allows anyone to ask
police is someone in contact with a child has a record of child sexual offences. Police forces process the application,
but disclosure is not guaranteed. There does not need to be suspicion to have a check made on a person. Although
anyone with an interest can use the scheme, it is most commonly used by parents or guardians.

Other campaigns to change the law include the following:

 Dignity in dying –campaigns to make it legal to choose the option of assisted dying for terminally ill, mentally
competent adults, currently, assisting a suicide is a crime with a maximum penalty of 14 years.
 Smoking in cars – The British Lung Foundation ran a campaign to ban smoking in cars with children in them.
As a result of the campaign, the law has changed in 2015. If a person smokes in a car with children in it, both
the smoker and driver can be fined £50.

CAMPAIGNS TO CHANGE THE PRIORITIES OF AGENCIES

An agency is a governmental private organisation that provides a service. In relation to crime and justice, this could
refer for example to the police, courts, probation service or victim support. It can also refer to other agencies such as
schools and colleges who may be able to influence those likely to offend.

An example: No Knives, Better Lives.

The priorities of agencies may change as a result of pressure from specific campaigns. One campaign to change the
priorities is ‘No Knives, Better Lives’, a national campaign to combat knife crime among young people in Scotland. It
is run by YouthLink Scotland and the Scottish Government. NKBL works with local organisations to provide
information and support. It seeks to draw attention to the consequences of carrying a knife.

Educational agencies – NKBL focuses on schools and colleges, seeking to change their priorities so that they see it as
part of their role to help reduce knife crime. The aim is to turn educational institutions into agencies that can work
with those in danger of becoming involved in knife crime.

With this aim in mind, NKBL engages in a range of activities:

 It produces educational materials for schools to teach children about knife crime and its impact
 Its website has a range of case studies highlighting the impact of knife crime
 It has produced a series of videos to help educate young people about knife crime
 There are blogs students and teachers can follow that provide information on knife crime and the work of
NKBL
 It recruits and trains peer educators – young people who work to raise awareness of the risks and
consequences of carrying a knife

NKBL has been successful in changing the priorities of schools and colleges so that they now see it as their
responsibility to play an active role in reducing knife crime in Scotland.

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CAMPAIGNS TO CHANGE FUNDING

The purpose of some campaigns is to ensure adequate funding for their particular cause. This can involve finding
ways to raise extra funds e.g. by stepping up appeals to the public for more donations.

It can also involve finding ways to put the funding on a more secure or long-term basis e.g. a campaign may seek to
shift the source of its funds from just relying on public donations to persuading the government to fund its aims.

An example: #WeWontWait

A good example of a campaign to achieve a change in funding is #WeWontWait by Parkinson’s UK. Its aims to
persuade the government and the NHS to commit more funds for research into Parkinson’s disease, rather than
much of the research having to be funded from public donations. At the same time, however, Parkinson’s UK also
campaigns for increased financial support from members of the public.

All-party support – Parkinson’s UK has support from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Parkinson’s disease,
through which it lobbies government. This is a group of MPs and members of the House of Lords who work to keep
the disease on the political agenda and to push for funding for new treatments and for care.

The campaign produces videos to highlight the nature of Parkinson’s disease and runs Parkinson’s awareness week.
Sufferers are encouraged to make their own videos to highlight personal experiences of the disease to raise public
awareness. The campaigns also use the hashtag #WeWontWait on Twitter to raise awareness of the need.

CAMPAIGNS TO CHANGE AWARENESS

Many campaigns have the aim of changing the public’s awareness of an issue or crime. This may mean that a
campaign tries to help the public to better understand types of crime. A goal of campaigns that raise awareness may
be:

 To encourage the public to help reduce crime

 To encourage victims of crime to come forward

An example: #MeToo

The phrase ‘me too’ was used by Tarana Burke, a social activist in 2006. It was part of a campaign in America on
MySpace social media seeking to ‘empower through empathy’ – that is, to make women stronger by sharing and
understanding each other’s feelings. Originally the campaign was aimed at poor black women who had suffered
sexual abuse. Burke used the phrase ‘me too’ because when she was confronted with a girl who had been abused,
she wished she had said ‘me too’.

The #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment and sexual assault was launched in 2017. It resulted from highly
publicised case of the film producer, Harvey Weinstein and the multiple allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct
made against him. This campaign uses the original 2006 slogan and asks women who have been victims of sexual
harassment or abuse to tweet with the #MeToo.

The campaign aims to empower women and girls to come forward if they have been victims of sexual harassment,
abuse or misconduct. The idea is to show the scale of abuse suffered by other women.

Success:

The campaign has succeeded in raising awareness of the extent of the problem and the need for action to deal with
it. Its success has been seen through the huge volume of tweens from women using the hashtag. On Facebook,
#MeToo was used by more than 4.7 million people in the first 24 hours. Although #MeToo began as a campaign for
women to raise awareness of their experiences of sexual abuse, men also began tweeting and using the hashtag to
show solidarity with the women and also tweeting their own experiences of abuse.

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CAMPAIGNS TO CHANGE ATTITUES

Changes in attitude are often a key purpose of a campaign. In some cases, this may be to help the public to accept
and understand the problems caused by certain types of crime.

An example: Stop Hate UK

Stop Hate UK is a national organisation that campaigns to prevent hate crimes such as racist and homophobic
attacks, and to encourage victims to report cases. It offers advice and support for victims and witnesses, and training
to help overcome hate crime. Stop Hate UK works with the Crown Prosecution Service to help promote the reporting
of hate crimes. A key aim of the campaign is to change the attitudes of both victims and witnesses of hate crimes
towards reporting. The campaign encourages reporting of all forms of hate crime and offers guidance on what
actions should be reported and the ways in which they can be reported. The campaign focuses in making people
more willing to see hate crime as a problem and to recognise the consequences for its victims.

Stop Hate UK uses both Facebook and Twitter and regularly tweets news in the field of hate crime. It also organises
local events to promote its work and to make members of the public more aware of hate crime and its impact.

Success:

A major success for the Stop Hate UK campaign has been the development of an app to enable the reporting of a
hate crime. The app means users in West Yorkshire can report crime in real time, whether they are a victim or a
witness. It also allows users to include video or photographic evidence to support their report, while GPS shows
where the crime is taking place.

Research:

For your controlled assessment you will need to compare the range of campaigns that you have studied in this Topic,
plus any others you have researched yourself. You need to consider the following questions:

1. The purpose of the campaign – what did it aim to achieve?

2. The background to the campaign – what events led to the start of the campaign?

3. Was it successful in achieving its aim – what evidence is there of the campaign’s success?

4. In what ways are the various campaigns similar to or different from one another? For example, do they use similar
methods? Are their aims different?

To complete this Activity, use the websites below to research the campaigns.

 Unlock You can find out more about Unlock’s work at: http://www.unlock.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/
More information about Unlock’s campaign, ‘Unlocking banking’, is available here:
http://www.unlock.org.uk/projects/past-projects/unlocking-banking/
 Dignity in Dying https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/
 The British Lung Foundation More information about BLF’s campaign against smoking in cars is available at:
https://www.blf.org.uk/take-action/campaign/smoking-
incars?gclid=CjwKCAjwo_HdBRBjEiwAiPPXpDUC3Mb77x9kU3KCuJ2o776G9B5fHrk_W63gqpfXT6owUt6
m9TRpbRoCxf8QAvD_BwE
 Sarah’s Law More information can be found at: https://www.localsolicitors.com/criminal-guides/what-is-
sarahs-law
 No Knives, Better Lives More information can be found at: https://noknivesbetterlives.com/ #WeWontWait
 – Parkinson’s UK https://www.parkinsons.org.uk/news/parkinsons-awareness-week-2017-we-wont-wait
 #MeToo More information can be found at: https://metoomvmt.org/ and on Twitter #MeToo Stop Hate UK
More information can be found at https://www.stophateuk.org/

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Controlled assessment preparation

What you have to do

Using your notes and research from topic 2.1 Compare campaigns for change, make clear and detailed comparisons
of a range of relevant campaigns for change. Make explicit links to planned campaigns with reference to specific and
appropriate sources to support conclusions.

Use the following criteria:

 Change in policy
 Change in law
 Change in priorities of agencies
 Change in funding
 Change in awareness
 Change in attitude

You should be aware that campaigns for change may have different purposes.

Compare examples of campaigns for change and examine their effectiveness in achieving their objectives

Marks available:

8-10: Clear and detailed comparison of a range of relevant campaigns for change. Explicit links to planned campaign
with reference to specific and appropriate sources to support conclusions.

Topic 2.2

Evaluate the effectiveness of media used in campaigns for change

Getting started:

1. Of the campaigns for change that you studied in the last topic, which one did you think was the best? Give
reasons for your answer.
2. What do you think are the most effective ways of a campaign spreading its message and gaining support?
Give reasons for your answer.

HOW CAMPAIGNS USE THE MEDIA TO BRING ABOUT CHANGE

As we saw in the last topic, campaigns use a range of methods to promote their messages. In this topic we will be
looking at a range of different media used by campaigns to bring about change and evaluate their effectiveness.

Blogs:

Blogs (short for web logs) have risen in popularity with increased use of the internet. Blogs usually contain
information or discussions. People write blogs on a wide range of topics. Originally a blog would be written by a
single person, but improvements in technology and the increasing popularity of this form of information exchange
have led to the development of multi-author blogs (MABs). Blogs are now produced by businesses, media groups
and campaigns, as well as individuals.

An example: Unlock:

Unlock, the organisation that campaigns to help people who have a criminal conviction, uses a blog to promote its
work. The blog acts as a form of diary, giving regular in-depth updates on the progress of current campaigns. This is
particularly useful for people who are already aware of the organisation and want to keep up with the latest
developments. Campaign directors can also provide information directly to anyone who accesses the website via the
blog.

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Unlocks blog also contains links to articles about issues relevant to the work of the campaign. The blog may include
links to other sources of information and is useful for anyone wanting to carry out research into the treatment of
convicted offenders. However, although the blog is a useful source information and news, it would probably only
accessed by those who are already aware of the campaign. The blogs in-depth nature makes it less accessible to
people who just want information about working with convicted criminals.

Research:

A. Use the link below to visit Unlock’s blog and answer the questions that follow.
http://www.unlock.org.uk/category/news-media/unlock-blog/

1. What information is available on the blog?

2. Did you find the blog interesting and easy to read? Can you suggest any improvements that Unlock could make?

B. Using the Unlock blog as an example, suggest how it highlights one strength and one limitation of blogs. Give
specific examples from the blog to highlight your points. Summarise the advantages and disadvantages of using a
blog as part of a campaign.

Viral messaging:

Viral messaging involves passing messages from person to person via social media. As with a cold virus, one person
may spread the message to many others, who in turn spread it further and so on. In this way, a message can reach
thousands or even millions of people extremely quickly – for example, when people re-tweet Twitter messages to
their friends.

Potentially, viral messaging is a very cheap way of spreading a campaign message widely. However, there is of course
no guarantee that people will in fact pass on the message. One way to increase the likelihood of the message going
viral is by identifying individuals with high social networking potential (SNP). This is related to the size of a person’s
social media network and their ability to influence others. A high SNP means the materials sent to the original
recipient are more likely to reach others. However, it may not be easy to identify people with a high SNP.

An example: Time to Change:

To go viral, a message must contain something that recipients identify with and feel inclined to pass on to members
of their network. One such message involved a post on Twitter. The post showed a picture of a coaster promoting a
campaign called ‘Be in your mate’s corner’.

The coaster was created as part of a campaign by Time to Change, an organisation that works to end mental health
discrimination. Although the coaster itself was the campaign tool and was designed to raise awareness in pubs and
bars, the tweet that went viral spread the message much more quickly and to a wider range of people.

Activity:

Send a message on social media to a group of friends. In the message you need to encourage them to pass the
message to other friends and let you know how many friends they have forwarded it to.

See how quickly your message spreads.

Compare the class results. What do the results tell you about the usefulness of social media in spreading messages?

Social networking:

Most people have some form of social network presence, usually on websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Many
people also have a presence on sites focused on recruitment and job prospects, such as LinkedIn. Since the purpose
of social networking sites is to connect with others, they can be useful campaigning tools. Most of the campaigns we
considered in Topic 2.1, such as Stop Hate UK and #MeToo, have some form of social network presence.

27
Two examples:

Stop Hate UK has a Facebook page and a Twitter account. These accounts give the campaign the chance to reach a
wide audience. Posts and messages will automatically reach followers and sharing or retweeting means the message
can be quickly passed on to others who may then choose to follow the campaign. Social media allows the campaign
to put up eye-catching material such as posters.

#MeToo is a social networking based campaign against sexual harassment and sexual assault. The campaign centres
of the use of Twitter hashtag to demonstrate support; the hashtag was used by more than 4.7 million people in 12
million posts in 24 hours.

Activity:

Visit the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the Stop Hate UK campaign using the links below and answer the
questions that follow.

https://www.facebook.com/Stop.Hate.UK

https://twitter.com/stophateuk

1. What messages are posted on their accounts by the campaign?

2. Do you find the pages engaging? Give your reasons. Would you follow them?

3. How many followers does Stop Hate UK have on Twitter?

4. Write a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of using social networking to promote a campaign for
change.

Advertising:

Many campaigns use paid advertisements to get their message across. These may range from posters for small local
campaigns to large national advertising campaigns in newspapers and magazines and on radio, television and
cinema.

Other ways of advertising include billboards, hand delivered leaflets through people’s letterboxes, flyers given out to
passers-by, asking local shops to display your posters, advertising on buses and trains, and advertising on social
media such as Facebook.

The cost of advertising – the amount and type of advertising a campaign can undertake will depend partly on the
funding it has available. For example, to advertise on national television during peak viewing hours can cost as much
as £40,000 for a 30 second commercial. This is in addition to the cost of making the advertisement in the first place,
which may be even more expensive. On the other hand, and advertisement in a local newspaper or on local radio
would be much cheaper.

Activity:

1. Find out how much it would cost to advertise in a local newspaper for half a page advertisement and a 30
second advertisement on the radio.

Web banners:

One way a campaign can use advertising is by producing a web banner. This is a form of advertising that asks
supporters with a webpage to show their support for the campaign by pasting its banner onto their page. For
example, Stop Hate UK invites supporters to use its web banner to promote National Hate Crime Awareness week. In
contrast to many other forms of advertising, this is free it relies on the good will of the campaign’s supporters to
display the advertising.

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Merchandise:

Another way to advertise is by selling or giving away merchandise. A range of merchandise can be used, from badges
and stickers to T-shirts and mugs. Selling merchandise brings added advantages of raising money for the campaign
while at the same time spreading the message. Members of the public may be more willing to give money to a
campaign if they get a product in return.

Radio:

Campaigns often use radio to promote their message and raise their profile with a wide audience. There are several
possibilities for radio publicity. For example:

 Radio stations are often willing to interview campaign representatives on air about the campaign or to invite
them to contribute to phone-in debates and discussions.
 Similarly, they may invite members of campaign groups to speak as experts in their field to give their opinion
on magazine and news programmes.

Local stations are likely to be more interested in campaigns with local angle, whereas national radio stations are
more likely to want campaigns with wider appeal.

Television:

Campaigns may use television to promote their cause. As with radio, a local campaign might try to appear on a local
news bulletin to get free exposure. Higher profile campaigns aim for coverage on national news.

Television advertising is another option. This can target a particular social group, such as teenagers, mothers or
motorists. Advertisements can be placed in programmes that attract these groups. On the other hand, if thee
campaign wishes to reach a wide spread of the population, advertising on programmes with a broad popularity could
be used, such as soap operas. However, as we have already seen, television advertising can be extremely expensive.

Activity:

1. Watch a local or national TV news bulletin each day for two or three days. Make a note of any appearances
by members of campaign groups. Make a note of the issue, the campaign and whether it was a local or
national.
2. When watching TV, make a note of any advertisement for campaigns.
3. Summarise your findings on the use of television by campaigns for change. Do you think appearances on the
news were beneficial to the campaigns you saw? Give reasons for your answer.

Film:

Films can be used to promote the campaign’s message – whether on the cinema screen, on television, or online on
YouTube or the campaign’s own website. Campaigns can produce information films and videos, for example showing
case studies of campaign issues. See also documentaries below.

An example:

Parkinson’s UK campaign uses films as a campaign too. The organisation has its own YouTube channel and it invites
sufferers to make films about everyday living day-to-day with Parkinson’s disease, which are then shown on the
channel. This approach gives a deeper insight into the disease for anyone considering supporting Parkinson’s UK. The
use of personal stories adds a human dimension to the illness and can act to encourage funding from both the
government and the general public.

Activity:

Parkinson’s UK YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ_KkZo1b6ghObp1c_7dAlg B.

29
For each of the clips you watch, answer the following:

1. What is the message in the clip?

2. How do the films help viewers understand Parkinson’s disease?

3. Do you think the films encourage the viewer to support the work of Parkinson’s UK? Give reasons for your answer.

Documentary:

Campaigns often use documentaries on TV, film or radio to promote their cause. Documentaries use images, audio,
factual information, arguments and other material to provide a report or investigation about an issue. The
presentation of relevant facts and arguments in visual or audio form can be an effective way of promoting a
campaign. Documentaries can also be produced to show the work of a campaign and its potential impact.

Drama documentaries can also be used to promote a campaign’s message. These are factual reports but they use a
drama form to illustrate the issues, for example using filmed reconstructions of events for which no footage of the
real event exists.

Activity:

Make notes on the following documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8L0sIrjOzc&t=247s

Word of mouth:

Campaign messages can be spread by word of mouth. Campaigners can spread word of their campaign by telling
family and friends about it. To spread a message more widely, the campaign may look to inform opinion leaders.
These are individuals who have some degree of influence with others. Gaining their backing may increase support for
the campaign since they may be able to use their influence to bring others on board. The great advantage of this
30
method is that it costs nothing apart from time. Supporters are also likely to be eager to tell others about the
campaign. However, it can be a slow process because it is largely a question of telling one person at a time.

Review:

1. Make a list of the characteristics of the kind of person you would imagine as an opinion leader.
2. Who would you choose to act as an opinion leader for a campaign about hate crime? Give reasons for your
answer.

Events:

Organising an event can reach people who might otherwise not hear about your campaign. Holding an event can be
a good way to launch a campaign and can be useful for focusing support. Inviting a celebrity or a prominent figure
from your local community might increase attendance at your event and help raise the campaign’s profile. Large
events can also attract coverage from local newspapers, radio or TV. If you hold your event in a prominent location,
such as a shopping centre, passers-by will see and hear your message. Events can take many forms, for example, it
could be a family fun day to attract people of all ages such as a sporting event. Alternatively, campaigns can hold
sponsored events such as fun runs to raise funds.

Review:

1. Imagine you are arranging an event to publicise your campaign. What kind of event would you choose?
2. Where would you hold the event? Give reasons to support your answer.

Print:

Print media include local and national newspapers and magazines. Although sales have declined in recent years, the
newspapers can still be an effective way to promote a campaign. There are two basic ways of gaining coverage for a
campaign in newspapers and magazines:

 Through paid advertisements

 By providing the press with stories and news items. In this case, sending press releases to local or national
papers can be a way of gaining free publicity for the campaign

Press releases are written communications sent to editors and journalists to announce something newsworthy in
the hope that the newspaper will give it coverage. For example, a campaign might want to promote a forthcoming
event, publicise a recent success it has had or highlight a campaign issue using a human interest story. Well written
press releases are very attractive to the press because they provide ready-made news articles.

Flyers are another way in which print can be used to spread a campaign’s message. These can be distributed by
campaigners relatively quickly and easily. Flyers can be designed to be eye-catching to increase support for a
campaign.

Newspapers can widen the exposure of a campaign because many people regularly buy a paper. For example, the
News of the World, which backed the campaign to introduce Sarah’s Law, had a circulation of over four million
readers at the time. This meant the message of the campaign reached a huge number of people. The emotive nature
of the topic –the murder of a child – and the language the paper used motivated many to support the campaign.

Activity:

Look online for a newspaper based campaign:

1. What was reported in the newspaper about the campaign?

2. What do you think the story achieved for the campaign? Did the story raise awareness of an issue? If so, in
what way such as use of real-life case?
3. What facts and/or figures did the story contain?
4. Was the story designed to help raise fund for the campaign?
5. Summarise the advantages of using local newspapers in a campaign for change.
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Websites:

Most campaigns have a presence online. In addition to using social media sites, campaigns may develop their own
websites. Often social media pages will have links to the campaign website. The website gives the campaign the
opportunity to present information in a format of their choosing, in contrast to social media, which has a fixed
format. No Knives, Better Lives uses its website to enable different groups to access information relevant to their
particular needs or interests. For example, there are separate pages for parents, young people and practitioners
such as teachers.

CONTROLLED ASSESSMENT PREPARTION

What you have to do:

Using your notes and research from topic 2.2 evaluate the effectiveness of media used in campaigns for change,
evaluate the effectiveness of the following media used in campaigns for change:

 Blogs
 Viral messaging
 Social messaging
 Advertising
 Radio
 Television
 Film
 Documentary
 Word of mouth
 Events
 Print

You should have knowledge of the media and specific materials used in campaigns and be able to evaluate their
effectiveness in promoting a campaign for change.

Marks available:

11-15: Clear and detailed evaluation of effectiveness of a range of media used in relevant campaigns for change.
Clear evidence of well-reasoned judgements to support conclusions.

Timing: You will have approximately 60 minutes to complete this section.

Topic 3.1

Plan a campaign for change relating to crime

Getting started:

1. Make a list of five types of under-reported crime that a campaign could be based on.
2. From your list of types of crime, choose the one that you want to use for your campaign for change. Give
reasons for your choice.

Important advice!!!

As part of your controlled assessment, you must plan your own individual campaign. This topic contains a series of
activities that are designed to enable you to plan your campaign. It is essential that you complete all of these
activities so that you will be properly to tackle the controlled assessment.

PLANNING YOU CAMPAIGN:

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This topic deals with how you are going to plan your campaign for change relating to crime. For this you will
obviously need to choose a particular type of crime to focus on.

Which crime should you choose?

You should choose a campaign for an under-reported or hidden crime. This could be a crime from among the ones
covered in topic 1.1. These are white collar crime, moral crime, state crime, technological crime and individual crime
(including hate, honour and domestic abuse).

What aspects do you need to address?

Whatever type of crime you choose, you will need to make decisions about the following:

 Your aims
 Your objectives
 Justifying your choice of campaign
 Your target audience
 Your methods and materials
 Finances
 Timescales
 Other resources you will need

In this topic, we shall examine each of these in turn and give you guidance on how to tackle them. When you have
completed the Activities associated with these issues, you will have devised your campaign plan.

Your aims:

The aim or aims of your campaign are what you hope it will achieve. Your campaign may have more than one aim,
but don’t have too many or you may lose focus.

You should focus your aims on one or more of the different purposes of campaigns that you studied in the previous
topic. We saw there that campaigns may aim to change a law or a policy, or the priorities of an agency. Similarly,
they may seek to change funding, or to change a person’s awareness of an issue or their attitudes towards it. For
example, your aim could be to change young people’s awareness of the effects of knife crime.

Your campaign name – Choose a suitable name for your campaign that reflects its aims.

Activity:

This Activity asks you to look at different types of change that a campaign might aim to achieve.

The website below identifies four types of change.

https://www.purpose.com/targeted-change-successful-campaigns/

A. Visit the website and choose one of the four types of change.

1. Prepare a brief presentation of the type of change your group has chosen. Include in the presentation information
about the campaign to bring about this type of change.

B. Consider which of these types of change might be appropriate for your campaign. (More than one type might
apply.)

You campaign aims should be:

 Targeted – identifying who or what needs to change

 Focused in impact – spelling out what change your campaign will bring about
 Brief and clearly expressed.

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Your objectives:

The objectives of your campaign are how you intend to meet your aims. Objectives are the stages or steps that you
will carry out when producing your campaign. Each of your objectives should be SMART – specific, achievable,
relevant and time-bound. Below is an example pf one objective that you might need to achieve if you were running a
campaign to raise young people’s awareness of the dangers of carrying a knife.

SMART EXPLANATION EXAMPLE

Specific Clear and to the point, not vague I will produce and distribute
and general. material that highlights the dangers
of carrying a knife.
Measurable You can track progress and easily I will give out 1,000 leaflets to
sere when you have reached each school students
objective.
Achievable Objectives must be something you I have permission from head
are able to do. teachers to hand out my leaflets.
Relevant You objectives should be closely This will reach my target audience
linked to your aims. You should be of young people who may be at risk
able to explain how each one takes of carrying a knife or aware of
you closer to achieving your others who do so.
campaign aims. Do not have
objectives that have nothing to do
with what you hope to achieve.
Time-bound This means you must have an idea I will distribute 200 leaflets per day
of how long each objective will take for 5 days.
and stick to that time frame.

LINKING YOU AIMS AND OBJECTIVES:

There needs to be clear link between your aims (what your campaign intends to achieve) and your objectives (how
you intend to achieve those aims). However, the objectives should not just repeat the aims; they should be clear
steps to achieve the aims.

Review:

1. List the aim(s) of your campaign. Remember to include the type of crime and target audience, and make sure
that you include the purpose of your campaign.
2. Break down your aim(s) into a series of objectives that are SMART.

Justifying your choice of campaign:

As well as stating what you aim to do and how you intend to do it, you need to justify why you have chosen your
campaign. The activity below will enable you to produce your justification for your choice of campaign.

Activity:

1. For you chosen type of crime, list all reasons why this crime might not be reported. For example, there may
be personal and/or social and cultural reasons for not reporting it.
2. What are the consequences of the lack of reporting of this crime? For example, does it affect police
priorities, or lead to under-recording of the crime? Note all those that apply.
3. Note how this type of crime is portrayed in the media. For example, is it sensationalised or glamourised?
What might be the impact of any reporting on public perceptions of this crime? For example, has the
reporting created a moral panic about the crime?

34
 4. Find police recorded crime statistics and statistics from the Crime Survey for England and Wales on the crime
in your campaign. Do these highlight issues that justify your campaign? For example, is the crime under-
recorded in the police statistics?
5. Look back at topics 2.1 and 2.2 and note any features of previous campaigns for change that you would like
to include in your campaign.
6. Note any real-life examples of the crime in your campaign. These could be local examples, ones that have
been in the news recently, or ones linked to the campaigns you have studied.

Your target audience:

Your campaign will be aimed at a particular group or groups of people; these are your targets audience. Your aims
should identify your target audience and your objectives should refer to the audience where appropriate. You need
to be able to explain why your audience is relevant to the campaign you have chosen. For example, it makes sense to
aim a campaign about knife crime at young people, because they are more likely to be both victims and perpetrators
of this type of crime.

Activity:

1. Identify the target audience for your campaign

2. Do your aims and objectives refer to this group? If not, add the target audience to them.
3. Explain why your target audience are relevant to your campaign. What is their connection to the type of
crime you have chosen? For example, are they potential victims? Offenders? Witnesses? People who might
prevent the crime?
4. Are there any key characteristics of your target audience that you need to consider when designing your
campaign – for example, age, gender or ethnicity?

Methods and materials:

Your objectives will include details of the methods and materials you are going to use for your campaign. When
planning your methods, you should refer to topics 2.1 and 2.2 to help you choose which methods will be best for
your aims and objectives.

Methods - In choosing you methods, you need to make sure they fit with your target audience. For example, if your
campaign was about young people and knife crime, you might choose to use social media to reach your audience,
because young people are heavy users of social media.

Materials – Similarly, your choice of materials also needs to consider your target audience. Explain, how you will use
your materials and why they will be relevant to your audience. For example, producing mugs might not be the best
way to engage young people.

Activity:

1. Which materials are you going to use e.g. leaflets, merchandise, posters, websites etc?
2. How will the characteristics of your target audience affect the methods you will use for your campaign?
3. Explain how your materials and the way you are going to use them will enable you to reach and engage your
target audience?

Finances:

Your costs – Finance is an essential part of almost any campaign. Your plan needs to consider what your campaign is
going to cost. This will depend on your methods and materials and these will link to engaging your target audience.

You will need to make a realistic estimate of these costs. For example, if you intend to give away merchandise, you
need to fully research the costs of that merchandise. If merchandise proves expensive you may choose to sell it
during events or online to help recoup your costs.

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Fundraising – You need to consider how you will raise enough money to run your campaign. You will therefore need
to include fundraising as part of your campaign plan. What you intend to spend cannot be more than the likely
amount you will raise from your fundraising activities, so it’s important that you make as realistic an estimate as
possible of what you think you can raise. Don’t be over-optimistic.

Activity:

1. Work out the cost of any campaign materials you intend to use. For example, if you are going to print t-
shirts, how much will they cost? How many will you produce?
2. How will you raise the money? Give some examples of how you might raise funds and how much you would
expect to obtain from these sources.

Timescales:

This links to the time-bound element of your SMART objectives. To make your campaign a success, you need to
ensure that everything is completed in good time. You should work out how much time you are going to need for
each of the following stages of your campaign:

 Planning and research – this involves gathering information about the issue and formulating your aims and
objectives.
 Design – You will need to allocate time to choose or produce images and words for use in your campaign.
 Materials – You need to allow time to create or obtain the campaign materials.
 Implemetation – Consider when you will launch your campaign and how long it will take to get the message
out to your target audience.

Activity:

Use the bullet points above, formulate a timeframe for each stage of your campaign.

Other resources you will need:

Finally, you should consider any further resources you may need for your campaign in addition to the materials you
have already identified. For example, these resources could include:
36
 1. Volunteers – You may need to recruit a team to help you, to run events, distribute leaflets, put up posters,
collect donations or signatures for petitions.
2. Training – those who are helping you may need training. For example, if you are holding an event to raise
awareness about knife crime, volunteers may need training in how to communicate with young people, plus
knowledge of the issues involved.

Activity:

You now need to complete your full plan for your campaign. All the activities you have completed in this Topic
should have helped you to do this stage by stage.

The web link below is a useful guide to planning a campaign.

https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-you-can-do/campaign-for-change/how-tounderstand-campaigning

B. Go to the link above and use the guide to check your own campaign plan. It may also give you some ideas about
what you might add to your plan.

C. Use the link below to check if your campaign has the five elements of the best campaigns.

https://hbr.org/2010/05/five-tips-for-leading-campaign.html

You may also find this link useful:

https://www.planninghelp.cpre.org.uk/improve-where-you-live/campaign-tips/planningyour-campaign

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38
CONTROLLED ASSESSMENT PREPARATION:

What you have to do:

Using your notes and research from topic 3.1 plan a campaign for change relating to crime, you should identify and
appropriate campaign for change. You should produce a detailed and comprehensive plan for your campaign,
including clearly described actions in a relevant time sequence.

Your plan should include:

 Aims and objectives

 Justification of choice of campaign
 Target audience
 Methods to be used
 Materials to be used
 Finances
 Timescales
 Resources needed

Marks available:

8-10: Detailed and appropriate plan for change including clearly described actions in a relevant time sequence.

Timing – In your controlled assessment you will have approximately 45 minutes to complete this section.

Topic 3.2

Design materials for use in campaigning for change

Getting started:

1. Before you consider the design for your own campaign, look at some campaigns to give you some ideas.
Collect a range of publicity materials, such as leaflets or webpages, for any crime prevention campaigns you
can find. These may be available online or from the police, libraries, community centres etc. Aim to get a
range of campaigns to give you as many ideas as possible.
2. Look for any posters and other public displays e.g. on buses that relate to crime prevention campaigns or
campaigns for change. Take photographs so that you have a copy of these to refer to.
3. Examine and discuss all the materials you have gathered to decide which ones have effective designs and
why those designs are effective.

IMPORTANT ADVICE:

As part of your controlled assessment, you must devise materials for your own individual campaign. This topic
contains a series of activities to enable you to design your materials. It is essential that you complete all of these
activities so that you will be properly prepared to tackle the controlled assessment.

DESIGNING YOUR MATERIALS:

This topic deals with how to design the materials you are going to produce for your campaign. You will have already
planned your campaign in the previous topic. Now you need to design the materials to promote the aims of your
campaign.

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Having well-designed materials is important in communicating your campaign message. You need to consider what
type of materials you are going to produce, such as posters, leaflets, newspaper advertisements etc. Your materials
need to be attractive to potential supporters and entice them to find out more about your campaign. Text and
pictures need to be appropriate and appealing, while at the same time reflecting your campaign’s purpose. You need
to consider the following points when designing and producing materials for an effective campaign:

 Structuring your information

 Using images and other ways of capturing attention
 Using persuasive language
 Promoting action
 Considering your target audience
 Aligning your materials with your campaign

Structuring your information:

Before you start designing your materials, you need to make sure your message has a sensible, logical structure. For
example, are the ideas in the right order? Are you repeating yourself unnecessarily? Proofread your text for spelling,
punctuation and grammar errors!

Activity:

Learning objective:

At the end of this activity you should be able to:

Determine what can make successful layouts for your campaign materials.

A. Watch this short clip and make notes on what makes a successful layout.

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/graphic-design-foundations-layout-and-composition/whatmakes-a-
successful-layout

B. Consider how you would layout the materials for your campaign using ideas from the clip. Write brief
notes to guide you when designing your layouts.

Layout:

The structure of your information includes the way your materials are laid out. This is important whatever materials
you are using – whether they are posters, leaflets, T-shirts, coasters etc.

You also need to consider the amount of information you include so as to ensure that your materials are not
cluttered. Obviously, the amount of information you include will depend on the type of material you are using. For
example, you can’t fit as much on a mug as on a leaflet.

Activity – structuring your information:

Re-visit the websites of the campaigns you compared in topic 2.1 and 2.2 and look at the materials you have
produced.

1. Make a list on the various ways their posters are laid out. For example, the Stop Hate UK campaign has a
range of posters on their website.
2. How does the information in the leaflets differ from the information in the posters? Are there any
similarities between the two?
3. Look at the merchandise that the campaigns have produced, such as T-shirts or mugs. How are messages
displayed on these?

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 4. For your own campaign, work out some layout designs to fit the materials you are going to produce. For
example, if you are going to use a poster, where could you put the main message, an image and contact
information for the campaign?

Using images and other ways of capturing attention:

It is important that your campaign materials capture people’s attention and enable you to get your message across.
There are a number of ways you can do this:

1. Images:

Images are the most obvious way of grabbing people’s attention and a well-chosen image can make a powerful
impact. You need to make sure they communicate the campaign’s message clearly. Images include items such as
photographs, drawings, cartoons, diagrams and symbols. You can use Google images and other search engines to
look for relevant images. For example, the ‘spoon’ poster is part of Karma Nirvana’s campaign against forced
marriage, aimed at young women who are being taken out of the country to be married against their will. It tells
them to hide a spoon in their underwear so that it will trigger the alarm at airport security and they can then get
help.

Some campaigns deal with distressing subjects and images may need to convey this, while not being so shocking that
they put off potential supporters. Other campaigns suit more positive images, such as beneficial effects that could
come from the campaign.

2. Text:

Your materials will probably include text. You need to consider the font and sizes you will use. It may be best to use
the same font throughout and to vary the size and boldness. A mixture of fonts can look fussy, as well as confusing
the reader and detracting from the message. Don’t try to cram too much into too little space; this will make your
message harder to read. Less is more, especially on leaflets and posters.

Colour is important. Text on posters and leaflets should be darker shades to make it easier to read. Headings, logos
or text on merchandise may use reversed text (light colour on dark background).

Logos – having a logo can be very valuable for a campaign. Using it on all your materials will give your campaign a
clear identity and give consistency to your message, which will help people recognise the work of your campaign.
Your logo may involve both an image and text. You should also consider the use of colours and fonts as well as the
image you use for your logo.

Radio and TV adverts – You may want to produce a campaign advertisement for radio and TV. If so, you need to
write a script for it, with a scenario that would capture and hold the audience’s attention. Think about how the
language you use would do this (and for TV, about the images as well). Look out for radio and TV adverts to give you
some ideas.

Activity:

1. Look at the images on the websites of the campaigns you studies in topics 2.1 and 2.2. Whish images draw
your attention?
2. What do they tell you about the campaign?
3. Why do you think the campaign selected those particular images?

USING PERSUASIVE LANGUAGE

Your language needs to persuade people to get involved and support your campaign. Persuasive language uses a
range of techniques to get your message across. These include:

 Repetition – using a word repeatedly, such as ‘carrying a knife can kill, kill, kill’
 Triples – Having three ideas to support your case, such as ‘dangerous, deadly, disgusting’. This example also
uses alliteration, which can be another effective device.
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  Exaggeration – Such as ‘Together we can change anything’
 Emotive language – To make your audience feel certain things by using words such as ‘Evil’ or ‘deadly’, or
positive language such as ‘love’. For example Stop Hate UK uses the line ‘Spread love, not hate’
 Rhetorical questions – where the answer is implied in the question, such as ‘Do you always want to be afraid
of this?
 Speaking directly to the reader – to address them in your campaign, use ‘you’ and ‘we’
 Anecdotes and human interest stories – Personal stories that link to the issue.

However, don’t go over the top in your efforts to persuade. When you have written your text re-read it and ask
yourself, would you find it credible?

Activity:

Learning objective: At the end of this activity you should be able to:

Determine what can make successful layouts for your campaign materials.

A. Watch this short clip and make notes on what makes a successful layout.

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/graphic-design-foundations-layout-and-composition/whatmakes-a-
successful-layout

B. Consider how you would layout the materials for your campaign using ideas from the clip. Write brief notes
to guide you when designing your layouts.

Promoting action:

Campaigns for change will generally be aiming to engage people in action. Action could range from signing an online
petition to attending a demonstration, volunteering to help with the campaign or lobbying a local councillor or MoP.

You need to make sure that your materials explain what action you want supporters to take and that they encourage
them to take this action. For example, if you want people to attend a demonstration, the details of where and when
need to be clearly stated on your poster or leaflet. If you want people to sign an online petition, the website where
they can access it must be clear and not too complicated.

Activity – promoting action:

1. Looking back at the campaigns in topics 2.1 and 2.2, list some of the ways in which their materials encourage
action from supporters.
2. For your own campaign how will the design of your materials engage supporters and encourage them to
take action?

Considering your target audience:

Having a target audience means there are particular people whose attentions you want to gain. As we saw in topic
3.1, part of your campaign planning will have involved identifying your target audience. Materials that you design
must attract your target audience. This means you must have the correct type of materials and the information in
them should be engaging to the audience. For example, young people may be more attracted to concise information
with a catchy tagline. They may also be more likely than older people to wear a wristband or T-shirt associated with
a campaign, especially with an appropriate design.

Activity: Your target audience.

For your own campaign:

1. Who is your target audience? Is there more than one group of people?
2. Explain how the design of your materials will gain the attention of your target audience.

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Aligning your materials with your campaign:

When designing your materials, you need to make sure they are clearly linked to each other. All materials should be
giving the same basic message. This could be in the form of a tagline – a short phrase that sums up your campaign
and that can be used in any materials your produce. An example of a tagline is ‘Stop Hate. Start here’ used by Stop
Hate UK. If you decide to use a tagline, consider the choice of language carefully and refer to the section on
persuasive language above when you are writing it.

Activity – your materials:

Working on your own, use the website below to help you to decide:

1. What types of materials to produce.

2. What design features to include in your materials.

https://www.planninghelp.cpre.org.uk/improve-where-you-live/campaign-tips/producingcampaign-
materials
3. Make a note of any key points that you find useful.

In Topic 3.3 you will need to justify your choice of designs, images, text and layouts that you have used in
your materials. The key points here will help you to do this.

Variety in your materials:

Although all your materials should carry the same basic message, you can introduce some limited variety. For
example, if your campaign aim was to discourage young people from carrying knives, your core message of ‘Don’t
carry a knife’ might be at the top of every poster, but underneath you might have ‘You can go to jail’ on one poster,
‘You can shame your parents’ on another and so on. This allows you to get across different aspects of your message.

Likewise, if your message is on a T-shirt, you could personalise it so it appears as if the wearer is giving the message,
for example ‘I support….’

You may want to have different materials for different phases of your campaign. For example, if you plan an event,
you may have one set of materials to promote the event in advance and then different materials to distribute at the
event itself. Although the campaign message is the same, the materials are different. For example, posters for an
event need to attract visitors to attend, but once people are there you can give them more detailed information
about the campaign and opportunities to sign petitions or to become active in the campaign. As well as information
leaflets, you could consider balloons for children or wristbands for young people – all with your key message on
them.

Using a logo is a good way of keeping an element of consistency throughout all of your materials and it also means
supporters will always recognise your campaign. E.g. Nike swoosh – instantly recognisable.

Activity:

1. Look back at the campaigns in topic 2.1 and 2.2. Note their logos and where they appear on any campaign
materials. Do they also have a tagline?
2. Design a logo and tagline to use in your campaign. Keep in mind the points in the section above on using
images and other ways of capturing attention.

CONTROLLED ASSESSMENT PREPARATION

What you have to do:

Using your notes and research from topic 3.2 design materials for use in campaigning for change, produce well-
designed, attractive materials for your campaign for change. Content must be appropriate for changing behaviour.
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Materials should be visually and verbally stimulating and be appropriate for changing behaviour. Materials should be
visually and verbally stimulating and technically accurate.

Your design should include:

 Structuring your information

 Using images and other ways of capturing attention
 Using persuasive language
 Promoting action
 Considering your target audience
 Aligning your materials with your campaign

You should consider the design of materials such as:

 Leaflets
 Advertisements
 Posters
 Blogs
 Social network pages

Marks available:

16-20 – Well-designed attractive materials are presented. Content is appropriate for changing behaviour. Materials
are visually and verbally stimulating and technically accurate.

Timing – In your controlled assessment you will have approximately 90 minutes to complete this section.

Topic 3.3 – Justifying a campaign for change

Getting started

You should already have planned your campaign and designed the materials you are going to use. You now need to
justify the choices you have made. This involves three things: presenting your case for action, using evidence to
support your case, and your use of persuasive language.

PRESENTING YOUR CASE FOR ACTION

In justifying your campaign, you need to present a case explaining clearly why there is a need for it. This will link back
to many of the previous topics:

 State clearly the type of under-reported crime you are campaigning about.
 Explain the reasons why the crime you are campaigning about is under-reported (topic 1.2) and what the
consequences of this under-reporting are (topic 1.3)
 You may also want to use relevant statistics to show the extent of the crime (topic 1.6). You may also want
to use examples or case studies to show the impact of the crime.

Activity:

Use the information above and your campaign plan from topic 3.1, write a full justification of the need for action on
the topic you have chosen for your campaign for change. Aim to write at least a couple of sentences for each of the
above bullet points.

USING EVIDENCE TO SUPORT YOUR CAMPAIGN

You need to justify the following of your campaign:

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 1. Why you chose your campaign name or tagline
2. Your methods, including why they would be appropriate and effective in achieving your aim.
3. Your target audience: who they are and why they would respond to your campaign.
4. Your designs, images, text and layout: what they are and why they would be effective.
5. Finance: explain why your campaign would be financially viable.
6. Explain why you feel your timescale for the campaign is realistic.
7. Any other points you want to make about your campaign, such as any interesting ideas you took form
successful campaigns that you researched.

Activity:

Using points 1 to 7 above, write a full justification of your campaign. For each point, you must show the evidence
that supports your case.

YOUR USE OF PERSUASIVE LANGUAGE:

Finally, you need to justify your use of persuasive language. You can do this by completing the activity below:

Activity:

Working on your own and using the list of types of persuasive language in topic 3.2, identify examples from your
campaign materials of where you have used this kind of language. Explain why you feel these examples are likely to
be effective in helping you achieve your campaign aims.

CONTROLLED ASSESSMENT PREPARATION:

What you have to do:

Using your notes and research from topic 3.3 justify a campaign for change, give a clear, detailed and well-reasoned
justification for your campaign. Include conclusions that are supported by relevant judgements including:

 Presenting your case for action

 Using evidence to support your case
 Your use of persuasive language

You should justify your approach and the need for a campaign for change.

Marks available:

11-15: Clear and detailed justification which is well-reasoned. Conclusions are supported by relevant judgements
including the use of persuasive language.

PREPARING FOR THE UNIT 1 CONTROLLED ASSESSMENT

WHAT DOES IT INVOLVE?

The controlled assessment is in two parts. The tasks cover the eleven unit 1 assessment criteria (ACs) and you must
address them all in your answers to the tasks (they are dealt with in the eleven topics covered in this booklet).

Part one deals with the material you covered in topics 1.1 to 1.6.

Using the brief – in Part One you will be given a brief, which is a scenario describing some crimes. Think of it as a
prompt to remind you about some of the ACs that you need to deal with in your answers. You should make a
reference to the brief all the time when answering the questions in Part One.

Part two – in this part you have to:

 Compare campaigns for change that you studied in topic 2.1

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  Evaluate the use of different types of media in campaigns that you studied in topic 2.2
 Plan, design and justify a campaign linked to an under-reported crime studied in topics 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3

PREPARE YOR FILE IN ADVANCE:

Before you sit the assessment, it is essential that you have thoroughly prepared your notes for all eleven ACs,
because you will need to take them in to the assessment with you.

There is a checklist below of what you will need to do for each AC. Use this to make sure you have written your notes
on all of them (organised).

ON THE DAY OF THE ASSESSMENT:

On the day of the controlled assessment, make sure you bring all your unit 1 materials and have your file in good
order.

For part one – you can take your file but you can’t take any electronic documents or devices, nor access the internet.
Everything you need must be on paper, so if you have any electronic notes you must print them off if you want to
take them into the assessment.

For part two – you are allowed to access the internet but not any electronic files of your own.

TIMING:

Part one is 3 hours long and worth 30 marks. For ACs worth 4 marks you should spend about 25 minutes, and for
those worth 6 marks you should spend about 35 minutes.

Part two is 5 hours long and is worth 70 marks. Divide your time roughly as follows:

 For 2.1 and 3.1 spend about 45 minutes on each

 For 2.2 and 3.3 spend about 60 minutes on each
 For 3.2 spend about 90 minutes.

AC WHAT YOU NEED TO DO MAX

MARK
PART ONE (3 HOURS)
1.1 Analyse different types of crime. This means you need to identify their characteristics. For 4
each type of crime, include victims, offenders, level of public awareness, whether it is
criminal, deviant or both. Give specific examples.
1.2 Explain a range of personal, social and cultural reasons why crimes are not reported, such as 4
fear, complexity and lack of public concern. Include examples for each reason e.g. that victims
of domestic violence may not report crime due to fear.
1.3 Explain a range if consequences of unreported crime, such as decriminalisation, cultural 4
change and police prioritisation. Include relevant examples such as lack of police prioritisation
of under reported crime such as cannabis use.
1.4 Describe media representation of crime, such as newspapers, television and electronic 6
gaming. Give the distinctive features of the representation, such as newspapers focusing on
violent crime. Include relevant examples, such as games like Grand Theft Auto.
1.5 Explain the impact of a range of media representations on public perception of crimes, such 6
as moral panics, stereotyping of criminals and changing public concerns and attitudes. Include
examples such as the moral panic about mods and rockers.

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1.6 Evaluate crime statistics including Home office statistics and the Crime Survey for England and 6
Wales. Give an overall assessment of the strengths and limitations of each, with a justification
for your assessment. Include reference to reliability, validity, ethics and purpose of each
method.
Part Two (5 hours)
2.1 Compare a range of campaigns for change, identifying similarities and/or differences between 10
them. Make comparisons in relation to their background, methods and success and include
comparison with your own campaign.
2.2 Evaluate the effectiveness of a range of different media used in campaigns for change. Give 15
an overall assessment of the strengths and limitations of each type of media and justification
for your assessment. Use examples from actual campaigns.
3.1 Produce a detailed plan of your own campaign, including aims and objectives, justification of 10
why it is needed, your target audience, methods and materials, finances, timescales and
resources. Be clear and accurate in all sections and give realistic timings and costings for your
campaign.
3.2 Present designs for your materials, including screen shots of websites, leaflet and posters. 20
Designs of merchandise such as T-shirts, mugs, wristbands etc. You should have a range of
materials.
3.3 Justify your campaign. Explain why it was necessary. Outline the evidence that supports your 15
case. Explain how the language you have used helps to persuade people to support your
campaign.
TOTAL 100

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