This module aims to:

Introduce students to the critical study of death investigation and regulation of institutions.

Identify and critically investigate a range of data in relation to empirical, legal and theoretical perspectives in the study of death investigation and institutional regulation.

Provide an understanding of the relationships between public services, regulatory agencies, government, society, individuals, and structural inequalities.

Develop students’ critical, conceptual and theoretical capacities across sociology, social policy and criminology.

(LO1) Understand the contexts and factors that lead to institutional deaths and harms

(LO2) Demonstrate an understanding of how legal and theoretical frameworks can apply to institutional deaths and harms

(LO3) Critically examine the way in which death investigation and regulatory regimes respond to institutional deaths and harms

(LO4) Critically reflect on whether lessons are learned in relation to preventing future institutional deaths and harms

(S1) Analytical skills: Students will learn how to think critically and analytically about official data, reports and inquiries in order to probe the taken-for-granted nature of institutional practices.

(S2) Research Skills: The module will teach students how to research institutional deaths and harms.

(S3) Intellectual Creativity: By allowing students to explore independent research interests in their assessments, the module will enable students to use their intellectual creativity.

(S4) Investigatory skills: Students will gather, investigate and critically interrogate official sources of secondary data in conducting their coursework on institutional deaths and harms.

The module examines deaths and harms in a variety of institutional settings; from a variety of theoretical perspectives; and critically interrogates regulatory governance in relation to each setting, in addition to locating each regulatory agency within wider systems of regulation that exist within broader structures of governance.

The settings examined will be policing, prisons, and NHS healthcare (including psychiatric detention).

The legal and theoretical perspectives investigated include human rights (in relation to the European Convention on Human Rights); structural violence (in relation to structural power and its capacity to cause deaths and harms by action and/or omission); and bio-power (in relation to the capacity of the state to regulate its subjects by coercive means).
The critical interrogation of regulatory structures incorporates specific regulators (eg; for policing, prisons, and healthcare); legal regulators (principally Coroners’ courts, bu t also civil and criminal courts); and the wider constellation of regulatory regimes as they might apply to institutional deaths and harms.

Teaching Method 1:
11 x Lectures
Scheduled Directed Student Hours: 11
Unscheduled Directed Student Hours: 0
Description: Lectures form a key part of the way in which this module is delivered.
Attendance Recorded: Yes

Teaching Method 2:
Workshops
Scheduled Directed Student Hours: 10
Unscheduled Directed Student Hours: 0
Description: The module will use weekly workshops to examine and interrogate issues raised in the weekly lectures.
Attendance Recorded: Yes

Self-Directed Learning Hours: 129
Description: Independent study, including reading, preparing and writing assessments, and any data preparation and analysis required for the assessments that could not be completed within class.
Attendance Recorded: No