Working out what to do with your criminology degree after leaving can be tricky. Of course, the most obvious route is a variety of different criminal justice jobs on offer. There are also other career paths not so closely linked to criminal justice. In this article, we’ll look at a few of these professions across the spectrum.
For many, the inspiration for studying something like criminology is to join the police force once they’ve graduated. Competition for places within the police force across the UK is always tough though. While factors of budgets and resource allocation can have a huge effect on how much recruitment the police undertake. If you have this as your primary aim while studying criminology at university, then by all means pursue this path, but have a back up plan to go alongside this, in case your application is unsuccessful.
If you’re wanting something similar in certain aspects to working with the police. It might be worth exploring social care. There may be additional training needed to work as a social worker, but straight from university, you can apply to be a social care practitioner. This will help toward understanding how to manage caseloads, and work in a large public sector body.
Alternatively, there might have been other aspects to criminology that made you want to study it at university. Or perhaps you no longer want to pursue a career in law enforcement. For example, it may have been the research side, of trying to understand something so epidemic as crime in our society, that intrigued you about criminology. If so, then perhaps a career path into social research could be more your style. There are many different avenues, some staying within the realm of criminology, while other disciplines focus less on crime and more on aspects such as wellbeing, life satisfaction, etc.
There’s also the option of going through a law conversion course after finishing criminology. This is a great way to make your degree more applicable to the legal sector. For example, if you were wishing to become a paralegal, a solicitor, a barrister, etc. It’s important to remember, that these courses have some of the highest dropout rates of further education courses in the entire country. It’s an extremely testing course, fitting the equivalent of a three year law programme into one year. So, only apply if you think you can manage this sort of workload.