Career Options for Criminal Justice Majors @ Criminal Justice Careers | Schools


Career Options for Criminal Justice Majors CJC Staff

So you will graduate with a criminal justice degree but may not be interested in becoming a police officer or a lawyer. Maybe you are looking towards police investigations or finding out why people commit crimes and how they commit crimes. Need some suggestions?

What do you want to do with the information you hope to learn about police investigations and the motivation and methodology of those who commit crimes? Are you interested in working with the police? With offenders? In the community? Do you want to work with ideas on this topic, or people affected?

Depending on your area of interest, and on your interest in pursuing a graduate degree, you could consider careers such as these:

Policy analyst for a legislator or politician addressing crime prevention or rehabilitation.

Program evaluation for an organization delivering services intended to prevent or reduce crime, or rehabilitate felons into the community.

Program development, devising programs for social service organizations working in crime prevention or rehabilitation.

Researcher or policy analyst for organizations attempting to create a more civil society, working within or outside a police department.

Psychologist studying criminal behavior and hired as an expert witness for a defendant or the courts, or by a lawyer attempting to influence jury selection.

Academic teaching, conducting studies, and writing on these topics.

A Criminologist is someone who studies criminal behavior and the methods society uses to deal with it. Criminologists conduct studies in order to add to the body of knowledge on crime. They examine the causes of crim, and explore measures to control or reduce it. The work of criminologists can help government agencies, legislators and law enforcement groups understand the causes of crimes and therehelp them deal with it.

Someone interested in a career in this field shuld have at leas a Master's Degree (a Ph.D. is even better) in a field like criminology, sociology or psychology. In addition to criminal justice courses, courses in psychology, sociology, statistics, physical sciences, etc. are required.

Criminologists work in law enforcement, private secruity, fraud offices, courts,prisons, social services, probation and parole, counseling and other systems that work with offenders.
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