Criminology
Whether you're keen to work to prevent crime, work within the criminal justice system, support victims or help individuals integrate into the community, you'll be challenged and gain a high-level of job satisfaction.
Beyond the roles directly linked to criminology, the skills you gain on your degree will open up opportunities in connected career areas within the legal field and youth work.
Ben Rosser, CEO of The Pythian Club
Ben talks about why he works with young people to prevent them from getting into trouble and his career path. He also talks about the challenges of this work and the passion you'll need.
If you've got the passion, you can help young people turn their lives around.
Find out more about The Pythian Club.
What skills will I gain during my degree?
In addition to your subject knowledge your criminology degree equips you with key skills valued by employers:
- professional communication
- digital skills, presenting information and data
- co-ordinating with others
- statistical analysis
- time management
- reflection and critical evaluation
- making reasoned arguments and ethical judgements
- research techniques
If you choose the Q-Step programme, you will also develop excellent quantitative analysis and research skills.
What are my career options?
Criminology graduates enter a wide-range of professions. While some of those professions are directly related to criminology, many are not.
Roles directly related to criminology
For roles related to your degree you might consider a career working with offenders, victims of crime, for an organisation involved in the prevention of crime or as part of the criminal justice system.
The types of roles that exist include within those career areas include:
Prevention of crime
- Police community support officer
- Community protection officer
- Youth offending officer
The criminal process
- Crime analyst
- Arrest referral worker
- Benefit fraud officer/criminal investigator
- Paralegal
- Crime intelligence analyst
- Prison officer
Work with victims
- Domestic violence advisor
Reintegration
- Probation officer
- Housing officer
- Social worker
- Community development worker
Roles connected to criminology
However, criminology graduates also go into a wide variety of other jobs where a criminology degree would be useful.
- Social policy researcher
- Frontline youth worker
- Court reporter
- Community/youth worker
- Legal secretary (and other legal roles)
- Public relations officer
Some of the organisations who recruit to these roles include:
- Charities including those working in the areas of homelessness, refugees, drug rehabilitation and mental health support
- Local government
- Youth Justice Board
- Probation service
What do criminology students go on to do?
Graduates with a criminology degree can access a wide variety of graduate schemes from general management schemes to finance schemes depending on work experience and interest areas.
There are also graduate schemes for the:
Previous graduates have gone on to work for organisations such as Ministry of Justice, British Gas, and Nottinghamshire County Council.
However, some graduates will go into careers unrelated to criminology including teaching, civil service, law, finance, journalism and many more. To explore different career areas take a look at our Career paths pages.
Career paths - Explore graduate careers
Prospects - What can I do with a criminology degree
What are my further study options?
You may wish to pursue further study at the end of your degree, there are several options from Nottingham:
- Criminology MA/PGDip
- MA Global Citizenship, Identities and Human Rights
- MA International Security and Terrorism
Other courses available include forensic linguistics, legal-related courses and criminal justice.
How can I develop my skills and gain experience during my degree?
There are many ways that you can develop your skills to support job and course applications in the future.
Gaining experience in one of the companies listed above or speaking to someone in one of the roles could help you form ideas and opinions about where you future lies.
Work experience
Depending on what area of work or role you might be interested in, and where, there will be specific strategies, from speculative applications to formal processes you need to be familiar with.
Faculty of Social Sciences - Placements Programme
Work experience - what, how and when
Nottingham Internship Scheme
We work closely with a huge variety of local and national businesses to bring you an exciting range of internship opportunities, for both current students and recent graduates
Nottingham Internship Scheme
Volunteering
Clinks
Police UK - volunteering in policing
Prison Reform Trust
Local volunteering opportunities include:
Catch 22
Framework
NACRO
Nottingham Community Housing Association
Nottingham Community and Voluntary Service
Nottingham Advantage Award
The Nottingham Advantage Award offers interesting extracurricular modules to develop your employability. With over more than 300 modules across our three campus in the UK, China and Malaysia.
Nottingham Advantage Award
Advice from Nottingham alumni
With our Career Mentoring programme, you can receive invaluable support via email from an alumnus while considering your career options. Choose a mentor in the career area that interests you and get a real insight into the sector.
Career Mentoring
Students' Union
The Students’ Union offers a wide range of volunteering options both locally and internationally which you can fit around your studies. For example:
Sova – mentoring ex-offenders
Alternatively you could get involved in a society or sports club - there's so many, you're bound to find one that interests you!
Students' Union
Students in Classrooms
There are three initiatives which will give you the opportunity to work in a local educational setting. These initiatives support the academic attainment and raise the aspirations of primary and secondary pupils, whilst developing the skills and employability of those involved.
These are excellent opportunities for students considering teaching, youth work or community engagement as a career.
Students in Classrooms
Please be aware that study abroad, compulsory year abroad, optional placements/internships and integrated year in industry opportunities may change at any time for a number of reasons, including curriculum developments, changes to arrangements with partner universities or placement/industry hosts, travel restrictions or other circumstances outside of the university's control. Every effort will be made to update this information as quickly as possible should a change occur.
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