Have you ever been the victim of crime? Are you fearful of rising crime rates? Crime is one of contemporary society's most pressing social problems - how should we respond to it? This album visits various communities in the UK to explore issues of criminal justice and the introduction of possibly controversial crime control initiatives such as restorative justice, which involves offenders meeting their victims. It also looks at schemes tackling problems of racial violence and other anti-social behaviours. This material forms part of The Open University course D315 Crime, order and social control.

Is the death penalty right or wrong? Does it act as a deterrent to serious crime? And is it necessarily an inhumane act? December 16th 2009 sees the 40th anniversary of the abolition in the UK of capital punishment for the crime of murder. In this specially recorded discussion, Professor Gary Slapper, Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University, Professor Barbara Hudson, Director of the Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Central Lancashire, and Dr. Nigel Warburton, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at The Open University, explore some of the fundamental issues underpinning our attitudes to this most severe of punishments. The discussion is chaired by radio journalist Penny Boreham.

Are prisons effective and does trial by jury still work? How should the law deal with companies that cause fatal accidents? And what extra rights should children conceived using donor sperm have? This album introduces the legal reasoning behind legislation, rights and justice. Experts and specialist lawyers debate how the law should address criminal acts and issues such as freedom of speech, donor tracing and adoption, taking into account the wider picture of how laws are developed and whether they reflect their contemporary social context. This material forms part of The Open University course W100 Rules, rights and justice: an introduction to law.