Personal Statement
Program: Criminology & Deviance Control

I am a person who has a strong sense of justice. In my pre-university days, I witnessed and was outraged by the increasing number of criminal acts in China as the country experienced dramatic social and economic changes in the past two decades. But I was more frustrated with the failure of the law enforcing departments to prevent and crack down on criminal activities effectively. But as senior middle school students, my classmates and I could only criticize, in our heated discussions concerning some major criminal cases disclosed by the media, the deficiencies in the existing law-making process and the lack of effective guidance in the entire society in the field of crime prevention, which made it possible for some criminals to act unpunished. It is such an awareness that became my strongest motivation in enrolling in the People‘s Public Security University of China to major in security and crime-prevention at the Department of --------, when I qualified myself during the fiercely competitive nationwide university entrance examinations. The moment I entered the university, I realized that my life would never be peaceful, for many questions that had been perplexing me would be worked out by myself, demanding my lifelong dedication. I also realized that the value of my life was to be embodied in my contributions to the maintenance of social order and the peaceful life of the general public.

As I started my undergraduate studies, I became fascinated by the systematic trainings that I received in the criminological theories and the relevant laws. Apart from achieving satisfactory results in my coursework, I did considerable amount of extracurricular readings that included Criminology co-authored by Freda Adler, Gerhard O.W. Mueller and Williams Laufer, and the Journal of Financial Crime published by London Henry Stewart Press. Through those readings, I developed some initial understanding of E-Commerce Security and Internet Casinos and Money Laundering, areas that characterize future criminological study but remain unexplored in China. These efforts helped lay a solid foundation for me to carry out higher-level research in the future. I also participated actively in seminars on and off campus. The regular weekly seminars held in my department witnessed my perceptive presentations. In particular, as representative of excellent students of our university, I attended the International Symposium on Preventive Criminology held in Beijing. My exchanges with the domestic and international elites in the field of preventive criminology significantly improved my theoretical level. This experience also made me alarmingly aware that my existing knowledge needs to be improved.

In studying every subject and every theory, I would maximize my initiative and creativity. I would not embrace uncritically any orthodox theory, but would attempt to arrive at its deeper implications. For instance, in learning the TAP (Time of Arrival of Police) Theory, I knew from my investigation that this theory has been widely applied in the criminal prevention practice of China‘s urban communities, which is symbolized by the establishment of the 110 Command Systems and the Street Patrol Systems by all the provincial and municipal public security bureaus, among which Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau‘s 110 Alarm Reporting, Reception and Police Dispatch System serves as a model. However, after consulting many materials, I discovered that the security problems in Beijing are still serious. Then, why the TAP Theory that has been effectively practiced in other countries becomes problematic when applied in China? My teachers and classmates had heated discussions over this question and some even cast doubt about the validity of the theory. I conclusion was that their discussions were somehow removed from reality and inevitably suffered from some degree of partiality. To verify the TAP Theory, I made field trips to several patrol police stations and obtained my answers. The first is the poor coordination among different police units, resulting in chaotic dispatching of those units. The second is the unclear subordination of the patrol police, which led to ineffective application of TAP Theory. This process of making detailed first-hand investigations concerning apparently perplexing questions excited me, making me realize that criminology and jurisprudence, as two broad disciplines of social science, are inseparable from reality for their construction and development. Their theoretical problems can be solved only in practice.

This initial sense of achievement encouraged me greatly. I used my winter and summer vacations to undertake internships in the district procuratorate, municipal public security bureau, and various relevant organizations of security and crime-prevention. During my internship at the district procuratorate, my proposals to the procuratorate leader that the prevention of internal vocational crimes should specify the potential criminals and that unnecessary prevention costs should be reduced were adopted. At the grass-root police stations, my concept that the prevention of crimes should take precedence over the penalties of the crimes aroused general attention. My distinguished performance during the internships organized by my university won me the honor of Outstanding Individual of Social Practice.

As a subject of response strategy that indicates crime genesis, development, laws of change, and prevention, criminology should focus on the correct diagnosis of the etiology and social conditions of crimes to provide firm foundations for the effective prediction and prevention of crimes. However, the deeper I delve into my subject, the more I have discovered that the existing criminological theories in China are too emptily abstract and most preventive measures are not practically feasible on one hand and depend excessively on foreign sources on the other. To make matters worse, most domestic scholars tend to indulge themselves in theorizations and importation of foreign concepts, resulting in their gaps from the international level in terms of the practical applications of advanced criminological theories. In the field of economic crimes in which I am particularly interested, I believe that the prevailing theories of crime etiology such as Ecological Theory, Subculture Theory, and Theory of Imitation are all somewhat far-fetched when applied to economic crimes. The lack of effective etiological studies of crimes has led to the ineffective functioning of the theories of crime prevention and control. This accounts for the increase in recent years of economic crimes in China, the continuous occurrence of major criminal cases and their serious impact on the social and economic order of the country.

An earnest reflection on those factors has convinced me that, for pursuing a more advanced academic degree, my ideal choice would be the establish London School of Economics and Political Science which, with its most systematic criminological theories in the world, offers me the opportunity to major in Msc Crime, Deviance and Control. The lively yet rigorous style of teaching, the pluralistic and multi-perspective academic climate and the world-leading research strengths of your esteemed school will undoubtedly enable me to assimilate the most comprehensive knowledge of criminology in a competitive class. The professional knowledge and expertise that I acquire in your school will become the foundation for the ultimate fulfillment of my career objective in my home country: to work as a criminologist who can contribute to social stability, reduce the crime rates, enhance the level of social civilization.