BSc (Hons) Criminology and Criminal Justice with Sociology

Discover employment and further study opportunities that you could consider once you graduate with a degree in criminology and criminal justice, and learn how you can stand out to graduate employers.

Where could your criminology and criminal justice degree take you?

• Draw on our inter-disciplinary approach to study, with a focus on contemporary issues, to gain real insight into the nature of crime, the workings of the criminal justice system and the society around you and equip yourself with the skills to bring about change.
  
• Explore a variety of social issues with a core theme of inequality, difference and diversity, and gain a thorough understanding of the rapidly changing nature of contemporary society.
  
• Equip yourself with in-demand skills – our graduates are highly sought after by a range of criminal justice agencies, including the police, probation, prison and youth justice services.
  
• Boost your employability and gain hands-on experience by volunteering with local and national criminal justice agencies.
  
• Open doors to a career in the private, public or third sector – highly transferable skills mean our students find career opportunities in a diverse range of settings.
  

• Year 1

• In your first year you’ll explore various perspectives on criminology and examine theories on the causes of crime and deviance. You’ll develop an understanding of the criminal justice process in England and Wales, and examine crime in the context of economic, political and social frameworks. You’ll also study key sociological concepts and theories, with topics including poverty and social exclusion, work, community, religion, media, crime, education, globalisation, and consumer culture.
  

  Core modules

  • CCJ401 Being a Criminologist

    This module makes use of contemporary examples of crime and justice to provide students with a framework for understanding how to develop their skills within the discipline of criminology. Students will analyse media constructions and policy developments with a criminological gaze, developing an understanding of what it means to think criminologically and to be a criminologist.

  • CCJ402 Introduction to Criminological Theory

    This module introduces students to criminological theory. The module addresses the importance of theory in criminology, critically examines a range of criminological theories, and applies criminological thought to a variety of practical concerns throughout history, including contemporary social life.

  • CCJ404 Crime in Context

    The module places criminology in the context of economic, political and social interpretative frameworks, and contributes to the creation of a criminological imagination. This module creates a learning environment that develops learner knowledge and the critical thinking skills needed to embrace a criminological imagination when considering how to interpret experiences and responses to criminological issues. A thematically structured programme guides students through the exploration of a range of contemporary issues in a manner that is focussed on the scrutiny of the social, temporal, spatial, political and economic contexts in which they occur.

  • CCJ405 Responses to Crime: A Comparative Introduction

    This module provides a broad-brushed overview of responses to crime in contemporary modern societies. It is comparative in focus, examining responses to crime both in the UK and in other jurisdictions, and it considers not only mainstream criminal justice responses, but also those that are informed by other rationalities, including social policy, risk management, and restorative justice. The module will include guest presentations from practitioners working in the field.

  • SOC1510 Social Identities and Inequalities

    This module explores how and why social inequalities influence lived experience and social identities. It focuses on a range of substantive issues, such as poverty, housing, education, health, morality, sexuality, gender, religion, work, unemployment, `race¿, dis/ability and explores how these influence culture, identities and lived experience throughout the life-course.

  • SOC1514 Introduction to Social Theory

    This module introduces students to key features of classical social theory. These features are placed within the context of the Enlightenment, Modernity, the emergence of modern science and social science, and their use for contemporary social analyses.

• Year 2

• In your second year you’ll advance your awareness of criminological and penal theory to understand punishment, and examine theories of criminology alongside contemporary social, communications and cultural theories, urban studies, international relations and social harm. You’ll also extend your critical reasoning skills as you examine processes of social change and explore consumer culture, ethnicity, globalisation and politics and the State, in historical and contemporary perspective.
  

  Core modules

  • CCJ501 Critical Issues in Criminal Justice

    This module explores cutting edge criminal justice issues and, drawing on critical criminological theory, interrogates their impact across criminal justice agencies, such as the police, courts, probation, prisons and youth justice. A particular focus will be placed on the wider social harms generated by criminal justice processes and their effect on vulnerable groups within society, including victims and offenders.

  • CCJ502 Theorising Crime and Harm

    This module takes recent developments in criminological theory and analyses the potential for criminology as a discipline to contribute to understanding, contextualising and countering some of the greatest challenges facing society and the planet today. The emphasis on harm tests the boundaries of mainstream criminology, and encourages students to think beyond social and legal constructions of crime.

  • CCJ504 Researching Crime and Criminal Justice

    This module prepares students for the level 6 dissertation module by providing an advanced understanding and comprehension of how to apply methodology to research aims. The module assesses the strengths and weaknesses of a range of quantitative and qualitative methodologies and provides an opportunity to apply the knowledge gained through course materials to a variety of real life scenarios.

  • CCJ505 Criminal Justice in Action: Structure, Policy and Practice

    This module offers students a view of the modern day criminal justice system, comprised as it now is of both state agencies (such as the police, courts, prisons and the probation service) and non-state agencies (such as voluntary/third sector and private/social enterprise agencies). Students will appreciate how the criminal justice system works with a range of offenders and victims, both at the statutory and non-statutory level. As well as looking at the system in England and Wales, other comparative examples will be included in order to widen students’ knowledge of how justice systems operate. The module will also engage practitioners working in the field as a way of extending students’ knowledge.

  • CCJ509 Employability Plus

    The module provides guidance, support and opportunities for students to enhance their employability. This module also provides guidance for students who have elected to undertake a placement at the end of stage 2 of their degree. On completion of the placement year students will return to sit stage 3. It is designed to build on skills learned in stage 1 and helps students become employability ready and, for those going on a placement, it helps in their search for a placement and in their preparation for the placement itself.

  • SOC2516 Culture, Structure and Experience

    This module explores the relationship between culture, social structure and social identities. It focuses on how this relationship has been conceptualised & discussed through a range of theoretical approaches from modern & postmodern theory, cultural studies and the sociology of identity and difference. These theories are then applied to current empirical examples.

  • SOC2524 Developments in Social Theory

    The module introduces students to the breadth of contemporary disputes in social theory framed within the context of classical social theory covered in Stage 1. These debates are linked to the historical events and empirical social research that were both informed by and influenced contemporary theoretical change. Foundational disciplinary questions are broached and formative critical thinking workshops assist in developing theoretical argument, analysis and evaluation.

• Year 3

• You have the option to take a placement year in your third year of studyIn your final year, you’ll design and implement your own research project to produce your dissertation, working independently with the support of a member of our academic team. You’ll also have the option of choosing from a range of criminology and criminal justice modules such as comparative studies, racism and criminal justice and anti-social behaviour or you can explore sociology in greater depth through modules including the mass media, drugs in society, health and the body.
  

  Core modules

  • SOC3549 Dissertation

    This module provides students with the opportunity to undertake their own sociological or criminological research project, working independently but under the supervision of an academic member of staff.

  Optional modules

  • CCJ606 Systemic Violence

    The module will present the issue of systemic violence. Students will consider the social, political and economic forces that shape structures of oppression and harm, critically examining particular topics in depth. Examples include ‘hate’ crimes, workplace violence and gendered violence. The module will also examine legislation, policy and practice in relation to these topics.

  • CCJ607 Global (In)security and the State

    This module explores the issue of global (in)security in the context of state and non-state conflict. Theoretical and conceptual understandings of crime, violence, victimisation and justice will be used to interrogate acts such as war crimes and terrorism. The module will address the history of such crimes and will critically explore State and international responses.

  • CCJ608 Social Change and Justice

    This module examines how attitudes towards crime and justice have changed and developed over time. It will demonstrate the importance of historically and socially contextualising specific crimes in order to increase the understanding of their contemporary relevance, alongside examining the political and economic context.

  • CCJ609 Crime, Control, Regulation and the Social

    This module critically examines steadfast and emergent social issues at the interplay between social control and the social, providing students with a critical understanding of how the social is regulated socially, culturally and legally. We will explore meanings, cultural significance, and political consequences from a criminological perspective.

  • CCJ610 Green Criminology

    This module will address theoretical perspectives, methodological issues, and empirical research related to the field of green criminology, including applied concerns, such as policy and social/political praxis, through a range of concepts, topics, and themes that are central to green criminology.

  • CCJ611 Leisure, Consumerism and Harm

    This module explores contemporary developments within the study of leisure and consumerism, offering a theoretically informed understanding of key issues at the forefront of the discipline. Students will have the opportunity to study the changing nature of criminology’s engagement with leisure against a backdrop of global consumer capitalism.

  • CCJ612 Experiential Learning Opportunities in Criminology

    This is an employability-focused module. It provides students with opportunities to gain practical insights into the knowledge and skills of practitioners, and/or the workings of criminal justice (and related) organisations, via engagement with either short work-based placements, practical short courses, or participation in applied research projects, depending upon the annual availability of opportunities in each. Students will be encouraged to link such insights with their criminological knowledge and understanding.

  • SOC3538 Philosophy of Social Science

    A critical introduction to the philosophical foundations of social scientific research, with an emphasis on the development of analytic skills through which students explore the philosophical and methodological possibilities and limits of knowing the social world. Critical reflexivity toward future research practice is sought.

  • SOC3544 Food and Foodways

    This module aims to provide a critical understanding of sociological issues relating to food and foodways, (the beliefs and behaviours surrounding the production, distribution and consumption of food both on an individual and collective level). The module encourages critical reflection and practical experience of research in the area of food and foodways through a mini project.

  • SOC3545 Social Theory and Political Action

    This module considers the relationship between theoretical activity and practical political activity (the question of praxis) in terms of contemporary political issues and disciplinary debates. Students are asked to reflect critically upon the political and ethical dimensions of social science and the impact social researchers have upon the wider society.

  • SOC3547 Media, State and Society

    The media occupy key arenas whereby various social groups compete with one another to set public, political, commercial and cultural agendas. This module examines the relationship between media, state and society. It covers a number of substantive topic areas such as environmental issues, terrorism, war reporting, hate speech and violence.

Every undergraduate taught course has a detailed programme specification document describing the course aims, the course structure, the teaching and learning methods, the learning outcomes and the rules of assessment.

The following programme specification represents the latest course structure and may be subject to change:

BSc Criminology and Criminal Justice Programme Specification 6931

UCAS tariff

88 - 120

A levels
88-104 points including a minimum of 2 A levels. Excluding general studies.

BTEC
18 Unit BTEC Extended Diploma: MMM–DMM in any subject.

BTEC National Diploma modules
If you hold a BTEC qualification it is vital that you provide our Admissions team with details of the exact modules you have studied as part of the BTEC. Without this information we may be unable to process your application quickly and you could experience significant delays in the progress of your application to study with us. Please explicitly state the full list of modules within your qualification at the time of application. 

Access
Pass a named Access to HE Diploma in any subject with at least 33 credits at merit/distinction. 

IB
24-26 overall to include 4 at any subject at Higher Level. English and Maths accepted within: Higher Level = 4 Standard Level = 5.

GCSE
All applicants must have GCSE (or equivalent) mathematics and English at grade C or above.

Other
14-19 Diplomas: accepted – please enquire. Other combinations and non-A level qualifications also considered.

Short of the entry requirements for this course? Don’t worry you may be eligible for a foundation year to prepare you for possible entry onto this course for the following year.

English language requirements.

We welcome applicants with international qualifications. To view other accepted qualifications please refer to our tariff glossary.