Program Overview

Criminology MSc

Overview

This programme has been developed in response to the need of statutory, voluntary and private organisations involved in developing crime reduction strategies. It creates and examines research-based evidence of which strategies work.

Course Details

Core Modules

• Contemporary Criminological Theory: You explore explanations of crime suited to the current times. You build on the criticisms levelled at 20th-century theoretical frameworks and move forward to the latest 21st-century frameworks currently in use and/or under development.
• Criminal Justice: You explore the modern criminal justice system’s structure, including the police, courts, prison estate and probation service. Developing your understanding of modern approaches to criminal justice, you examine contemporary policing and court reform, and external factors influencing these systems.
• Dissertation: You gain awareness and skills in research and evaluation, and your ability to integrate, synthesise and critique criminological content, concepts and research methodologies in the production of a research-based dissertation.
• Social Research Methods: You develop an advanced understanding of the processes and issues of social research. Drawing upon the philosophical underpinnings which are central to research methodologies, you consider the relationship between theory, methods and data.

Optional Modules

• Criminological Theory: You explore the historical ideas to explain crime and deviance. You take a socio-historical perspective, charting the development of criminological science from pre-modern assumptions based on religious ideas, through the first real attempts to produce rational explanations for criminal offending, into the 20th-century and through to the rise of postmodernism.
• Policing and Security: You examine policing within the wider issue of security in modern society. You look at extant sociology of the police and on other theoretical bodies of knowledge from fields such as political economy, political sociology, state theory and organisational theory to interrogate the development, role and practices of the public police and its relationship with private policing.
• Social Inequalities: You study complementary blocks of teaching. In the first block, you gain a theoretical overview of sociological context and explanation for myriad issues relating to the topic of social inequality. You explore economic sociology and political economy, with explanatory frameworks for inequality of income.
• Studies in Criminology and Social Policy: You examine methodological and empirically innovative or significant research methods and studies in criminology and social policy. You explore a broad range of research design and methods to expand your understanding and awareness of approaches to social research.
• Victims and Offenders: You explore a variety of crimes from the perspective of victims and offenders, including violence against women in international, national and local policy agendas.

How You Learn

You learn through lectures, seminars, tutorials, workshops, computer-assisted learning, discussions, guided reading, case studies, research exercises and projects, and research using conventional library sources.

How You Are Assessed

Modules are assessed by a combination of formative and summative assessments. Formative assessment includes seminar exercises and group oral presentations, whereas summative assessment ranges from essays and case studies to structured project and knowledge checks based upon preparatory readings.

Entry Requirements

Applicants should normally have a second-class honours degree in a relevant field. However, those who have relevant professional qualifications and/or relevant experience will also be considered.

Employability

Opportunities exist in the criminal justice system (including the police, prison, probation and youth offending services). This programme is also ideal if you're interested in working (or already work) in social services and related voluntary agencies. Some of our MSc students continue to doctoral studies and/or work at colleges and universities.

Information for International Applicants

International applicants can find out what qualifications they need by visiting the university's website.

Fees

Full-time

• UK Applicants: £7,710 a year
• International Applicants: £17,000 a year

Part-time

• UK Applicants: £855 for each 20 credits

Duration and Attendance

Full-time

• Length: within 1 year
• Attendance: Usually two evenings per week
• Start Date: September

Part-time

• Length: 2 years
• Attendance: Tuesdays and Thursdays 6.00pm - 9.00pm (some variation depending on options chosen)
• Start Date: September