Lesson video

Hello.

Welcome to today's citizenship lesson.

I'm Mrs. Barry, and I will be your teacher today.

We are starting a series of lessons today about crime and today's lesson is one of six and we are focusing on, What is a crime? Now, I hope you have got everything you need with you but just to remind you, you need your brain, something to write with, something to write on, Pen or pencil, and some paper would be good for you during this lesson.

You make sure you've turned off any apps or notifications that might come up, so you're free from distraction.

And we can work on this lesson together when you're ready Today in this lesson we're looking at this overall question of, what is a crime? We're going to do this in a few different ways where it starts off by looking at morality and what is the difference between right and wrong? How do we know what the difference is, When we make a decision? we're going to define what crime is using a few examples.

And we're going to think about criminal versus civil law because they help us to define what a real crime would actually be in terms of the law.

And so throughout all that, we will be checking your understanding and that's, I call it, our lesson.

Question here is, what is right and wrong? And how do we know what is right and wrong? And sometimes we might refer to this as having a moral compass and a compass is something that guides you.

So if you're going out on a venture some way, you might take a compass with you, and if you want to go in a certain direction you can look for North, East, South, or West as an example.

Most of morality is your sense of what is right and what is wrong.

And we can use this when making decisions particularly those that have good and bad consequences, for every action we take has a consequence of some kind and we need to make a decision, weighing all the options about what we should or shouldn't do.

Just think about before we move on, how do you make your decisions about what you should or shouldn't do? Is there a certain process you use? Is there someone you might go out and ask just have a think about your own decision-making process.

I'm going to give you a little scenario and I want you to think about what would you do? Your friend has broken a rule, they have taken something that isn't theirs.

They beg you not to tell anyone else.

And another person is accused of being the person who stole.

you ask your friend to tell the truth.

They refuse.

That person who's been accused is probably going to get into trouble for something they didn't actually do.

What would you do about it? Would you keep it a secret or would you hand your friend in? There's no right or wrong answer here.

You can either keep it a secret because you want your friend to trust you and you don't want to betray them in that way.

Or you can hand your friend in because you don't want the person who's being accused of having a punishment when it wasn't fair because they didn't actually do it.

And that's a personal choice.

So what I want you to think about is what's influencing your decision in that particular scenario? Why is it that you either keep it a secret or hand your friend in? Let's think about that a bit further.

what things influence the decisions that you make? And I'd like you to try and come up with a list of five.

Don't worry if you can't come up with five, but that's my challenge to you.

Where do our views about what is right and wrong Come from? Pause the task.

when you're ready, press play and we will continue.

These are just five ideas.

You might have a few more, doesn't mean they're wrong if they're not on my list, but just five for areas that I think, might influence the decisions that people make.

Your parents will have different viewpoints, that might be your carer, or your guardian, teachers, they will share their opinion.

potentially in lesson, but also they're there to guide you.

That's the role of a teacher.

The media might influence you.

You might've heard of influences on social media that designed to try and persuade your viewpoint in some kind of way, or friends.

So you might go with what your friends think, and then the rules or laws of a country, can impact what you do or do not do.

If you know, for example, that it's against the law to murder, hopefully you're not going to go out and murder anyone.

When do we learn the difference between right and wrong? Is there a certain point in our lives? Our parents are there when we're small and they're designed to teach us things as we grow up.

So really from when you're born, your teachers are there for your school years, So between say the ages of four and 18 roughly, they will be there to help guide you.

The media is constantly there, friends, they might change, so your views on what's right and wrong, will change.

And then the rules and laws are always there.

And they're taught to you by the people around you.

And when did we become responsible for our own actions? Is there a certain age you might think we are responsible for everything we do? Do you think three-year-old knows enough to be able to decide what they do? Or do you think it's when you're older? Is it when you turn an adult to 18? Just have a think about that.

At some point we have to become responsible for our own actions.

And that means that whatever we do, we own up to it.

And we take the responsibility for what we have done.

Now it's up to you what age you think that should be? But legally, there are ages where we become criminally responsible for ourselves.

And it's slightly different across the United Kingdom, because the powers about who, about crime are different because it's devolved.

Which means it's separated down to the different areas.

They make the decisions in their own area.

In Scotland, from the age of 12, you are criminally responsible for yourself.

And in England Wales and Northern Ireland, you are criminally responsible for yourself at the age of 10.

And it's from that age, you can be charged for crime.

But just to know, a lot of you would have said, well, 18 is when you're responsible because that's when you're an adult.

That's when you can go off on your own.

But because of this lower age of criminal responsibility, it means that the justice system across the United Kingdom does work slightly differently than those young people compared to adults.

Between the ages of 10 and 17 and a bit until you turn 18 then you are in the youth justice system.

But once you turn 18, then you're in the adult justice system and they do work slightly different.

The courts are slightly different.

The penalties are slightly different to take into account that you are not an adult until you're 18, and therefore you're still learning, but it's believed that you should be able to have some responsibility for your actions when you turn 10 or 12 in those respective places.

We are going to look at, Have you ever committed a crime? And what crimes do you know about? This video has got a lot of crimes in it and I asked the general population, do they know if they've ever committed a crime? Do they realise they have committed a crime? Have a think about it.

Have you ever done any of these things the public is talking about? Criminals, criminals, bad.

I would never do that.

Respect the law Think crime is not for you? Think you're innocent?.

Well, a study shows that Mr. Average breaks the law once a day.

Did you break the law yet today? Not yet.

It's morning.

No.

I don't think that, Not that I know of but probably.

I haven't done anything at all.

Really, I just got on the bus and got to school.

Jumped the red traffic light on my bike.

Are you repentant? No.

What about one of the nation's most broken laws, talking on the phone whilst driving.

It's against the law, you know, don't you think it's bad? Yes.

It's bad, obviously, because you can cause an accident, right? But yeah, I don't know why.

You remember that commercial on TV, where the guy's driving and he's calling home and then his wife asks me, when are you going to be home? And then he crashes and she says, Oh, you remember that one? Well, I think it was kind of help, encourage people not to use their phone on the road.

What about dropping litters? It's against the law.

So leaving behind an innocent sweet wrapper, could make you a criminal and the litter might fight back.

I've dropped litter on occasions.

I was in that girl scout camp, and basically we were told to treat nature well, so I spent six weeks taking out trash everywhere.

So I'm unlikely to drop it right now.

Littering? Is that breaking the law? Like horrible.

If everyone left litter everywhere.

Downloading music for many websites is illegal, but it isn't so bad.

You know, you get tempted by the fact that it is there.

Even these websites that give free music should be closed.

They can't accuse us when they're providing it, they should attack them.

It's not a proper offence.

That should be allowed.

Not really.

The music industry makes money.

How are you going to make money though, if no one's buying them? Not about that concern.

They have to to do that.

Riding your bike on the pavement might seem convenient.

But is it worth a criminal record? Yeah, I've occasionally cycled on the pavements.

Do you think you should be penalised for that? No, not if its not dangerous.

It's not an isssue Not every road has a cycling lane.

Yes, but you have to be, What if the road is really tiny and the car is right there? That's your choice, isn't it? Because you have to take responsibility, you got to take the road because the pavements are for pedestrians.

They got to walk Risking the wrath of the police.

People are willing to break the law every day for their own convenience.

So what's the point in having these laws? There has to be rules If it isn't there, the rules are there for a place and is like a, Serious its like murder, and protecting people's free will.

And then there's things like dropping litter which is quite not nice.

There needs to be a bit of common sense involved.

That's not enough money to put everyone in prison.

What about the killers? Or we don't really know about all these laws, there's not a poster up saying, well, one don't litter or anything.

Some of it is like, really, it's not actually our problem per se, but the country.

I didn't break the law ,yea, when I'm aware of that.

As you could see in that video, there are lots of different crimes out there and some of them you might commit without even realising.

And they did mention about how you need to be responsible for your own actions and take note of what you're doing and make sure you're aware of what is right and what is wrong in terms of crime and the law.

Have you ever committed a crime? That's for you to know.

What crimes can you think of? In that clip there are lots of different crimes that they mentioned we've mentioned some earlier in the lesson, and I wonder if you know any as well.

I'd like you to create yourself a mind map with as many different crimes as you can.

When you're ready press pause and give that a go.

Take you a few minutes to do.

And then when you are finished, I say, we can continue with the lesson.

Here are just a few, you probably have far more than I do.

And just some ideas that you might have written down, things like theft, arson, murder, or antisocial behaviour they're all crimes that you may have thought of.

Can you recognise a crime? Which one of these do you think is a crime? We've got option one, going to the pub at age of 14, option two, taking something that does not belong to you.

Option three, purchasing solvent at the age of 10, or option four, borrowing a friend's pen without their permission.

YOU need to be able to define a crime.

And a crime is an illegal action or activity for which a person could be punished by law.

It's breaking the law.

When you break the law, you go against a set of rules, set, up that you are expected to follow and if you don't follow them then there are punishments in place.

If a crime is when you break the law then we also need to know what is the law and the Cambridge dictionary say, it's a rule usually made by a government that is used to order the way in which a society behaves.

There are set of rules that you're expected to find.

Now think about it, what rules do you have to follow? What are the consequences? For example, are you expected to tidy your bedroom? and what happens if you don't? Do things get taken away from you? Or in school if you don't sit and listen in class, is there a consequence for that, that you then have to follow? Laws are rules of the country, and when you break them you commit a crime, meaning there is a consequence, and that leads to the criminal justice system.

From that, can you tell me which one of these is a crime? Those are the options again.

Going to the pub at the age of 14, taking something that doesn't belong to you, purchasing solvents, or borrowing your friend's pen without permission.

And it was option two, that's theft.

Taking something that doesn't belong to you.

It's a rule of the country that you shouldn't steal or thieve.

If you take something that doesn't belong to you, broken that and then would be a consequence.

There are two types of law in the UK, criminal and civil, and it's easy to mix them up and think that some actions are crimes when they actually aren't.

Some things that go against others are civil.

When there is a dispute or argument between individuals or organisations and some other issues are criminal.

And that's when someone is breaking the law, and a criminal law is when you go against the law of a country.

They are cases against the government.

Whereas a civil law is a private matter against an individual organisation.

A law isn't broken, but a personal organisation will feel as though they've been wronged.

Some issues that are civil, people mix up with being criminal and think that you can go through the criminal justice system as a result of that civil issue.

And there is a separation between these two and will help us understand what a crime is.

For task three of this lesson, I want you to create a two column grid and think about which actions would be classed as civil or which would be classed as criminal.

You've got nine different things there.

create those two columns and write them down under those two titles.

When you're ready, press pause, give that a try.

It'll take you about five minutes and then press play.

When you are ready to begin to continue with our lesson.

Here we go.

Hopefully you gave that a good try and you can see here color-coordinated the different law cases.

Under civil, you've got injury in a car accident, divorce, neighbour dispute, and unfair dismissal.

They're all people related.

They're against a person that didn't actually break the law.

You might think injury in a car accident, surely a car accident itself is criminal but that depends on how that happens.

The injury itself is a civil dispute.

The criminal ones they're speeding, murder drug, possession theft, and truanting, they all break laws of this country saying that you cannot do those things.

What is a crime and there are two separate types of crime that's worth knowing about.

We have misdemeanours, they are less serious.

The things like burglary, they tend not to cause physical harm or damage.

And then you have felonies which are the most serious and these would have a major impact on others and other serious laws such as murder.

That's the end of our lesson today, well done.

Just to recap, we have gone through what a crime is.

We've considered the difference between what is right and wrong how we made those decisions and thought about some dilemmas that might make us decide one way or the other where we're going and what influences us in those decisions.

We have defined crime.

So, hopefully you'd be able to tell me what a crime is as a standard definition.

And we have looked at the difference between some criminal and civil crimes and laws so that we can define what actually would be an arrestable offence.

And then we have also looked at different types of crimes.

So you've got some examples of what would be classified as a crime and what wouldn't be.

Hopefully throughout this lesson, you've understood that all.

And obviously if you haven't, then you're welcome to go back through any part of the lesson, as you wish.

Now I do have a takeaway task for you today because one thing that's quite interesting to do is to investigate it.

And so you can investigate crime in your local area.

You can access the local crime information by looking at the UK police website.

You must ask a parent or carer to help you with that just to make sure that you're looking at the right things.

And you can never reflect on that.

What surprises you about the crime in your area? Why is it good? Do you think to be aware of what's happening and hopefully that will be something of interest to you.

I know that I find crime really interesting topic and I certainly hope that you join me for some more lessons on crime in the future.

You can share that work with Oak National.

And if you'd like to do that, then again, ask your parent or carer with that, and you can pop up on Instagram, Facebook or twitter is in the @OakNational tag, and #LearnWithOak.

Before you finish, don't forget to complete your exit quiz but well done for today's work.

And I look forward to seeing you soon.