1. Make full use of the resources
– Have you checked out the material available in the In psychology section? In the Clinical Sciences Library? Psychiatry? Law?
– Should be a mixture of book and journal articles – so use Criminal Justice Abstracts to search – AND PsychInfo
– Do not overuse the internet and when you do make sure it’s a credible source – and if you can check the facts elsewhere
– Your reading must go a considerable way beyond the material covered in the lectures
– Lectures are a starting point and guide to the material – a beginning and not the end

2.Demonstrate your understanding of psychological and psychiatric terminology

3. Incorporate psychological theory where appropriate – but make sure its relevant
And APPLY your knowledge – I don’t just want a description of what you know or what you’ve read (or what I covered in the lectures) – I want you to do something with that info, describe the background and evaluate it.

4. Be up-to-date: and do not forget importance of policy and legislative changes, HO/MoJ reports etc.

for the essay question. think about
1. what is the relationship between personality disorder and crime.

2. it is also an important aspect that what is the problematic about trying to establish between these two terms.

3.how you going to define these terms? you can talk about specific personality disorder and specific crime. you might wanted to focus on one specific personality disorder particular, the obvious one to choose is something like APD and social personality disorder, the problems of it and how about the changes has been transferred to personality disorder

4. you need to think critically about what is it mean to say its relationship. is it cause of relationship? is it correlation? what is the inherent problems trying to show then link between types of disorder and types of crime.

5. a good essay will take critically thinking further,
use question not just think about inherent difficulties in the disorder and crime, but in terms of specific problems of personality disorder.

6. choose your personality disorder and crime carefully

7. you will need really clear definition of personality disorder and will need to look at the characteristic of disorder

8. you might choose one disorder to talk about it such as APD, you might look at violent crime or homicide

9. the first thing to solve with this question is how you going to define these terms. you can break it down to specific crime and personality disorder.

10. if you look at APD, you got personality disorder that defines people on the basis of their behaviours, you should look at critical literature, that suggest that APD is part of social construct.