Criminal Justice Degree

This site provides information on pursuing a criminal justice degree. Information provided includes a directory of schools offering the criminal justice degree, along with forms to request additional information.

Criminal Justice Skills: To pursue a career in criminal justice, you must have good writing and presentation skills, a strong sense of ethics, interviewing skills, computer literacy, analytical and research skills, critical thinking skills, patience, the ability to make decisions effectively, and a broad understanding of criminal law and the criminal justice system.

Criminal Justice Degree Courses: Criminal justice degree programs typically include courses in criminal law, the structure of the criminal justice system, the tools available to law enforcement, the nature of criminals and other offenders, and more. Criminal justice degree courses train students on current trends in criminal research and technology used in fighting crime. In addition, criminal justice degree students take courses that teach the organizational skills needed to organize and manage criminal justice organizations.

Examples of criminal justice courses include: introduction to criminal justice, criminology, criminal procedure, introduction to policing, criminal court systems, introduction to corrections, ethics in criminal justice, research methods in criminal justice, cultural diversity in criminal justice, criminal justice administration, criminal justice policy analysis, managing criminal justice personnel, futures of criminal justice, and more.

Employment in Criminal Justice: There are many types of employment for graduates with a criminal justice degree. Some of these jobs include: security officer, customs agent, police officer, corrections officer, drug enforcement agent, detective, naval investigator, fish and game warden, court clerk, victims services, and many, many more such roles. In these uncertain times and increasing demand for security, job prospects for those with a criminal justice degree are very good.

Nature of Work in Criminal Justice: Criminal justice work can vary significantly with the specific employment. But many criminal justice jobs demand the ability to research and investigate events that have already taken place, through the review of forensic evidence and interviewing of other individuals that may have information about the events in question. Criminal justice work require you to be able to gather this information and reconstruct events. This may require repeated efforts to gather more and more data. In addition, great patience is required and sometimes it is not possible to determine what happened, and in such cases criminal actions may go unpunished. Of course, many times, it is possible to reconstruct the events and bring them to a successful resolution.