Psychology, Crime and Justice (with Placement)

UCAS code: CL88

Here's what University of Bedfordshire says about its Psychology, Crime and Justice (with Placement) course.

Our accredited course brings to life this exciting field, exploring how psychology can help us understand the minds of offenders, criminal behaviours and why people commit crimes, with reference to specific crimes. You also focus on crime investigation and what happens in the courtroom in areas such as eyewitness behaviour; detecting deceptive behaviours; and exploring how juries reach their verdicts. In your final year, you develop the advanced skills needed to assess offenders and put in place interventions.

Professional Practice Year Take your course over four years and include a Professional Practice Year after your second year of studies. It is an opportunity to apply your learning in the workplace while enhancing your knowledge and skills through fee-free paid practice. It also builds your CV and industry contacts with many students progressing to employment within their practice-year organisation or institution.

Course Accreditation/Industry Endorsement

This course is accredited by the British Psychological Society (BPS).?Graduating from a BPS-accredited degree with a 2nd-class Honours or above makes you eligible for Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership (GBC) of the Society.

Facilities and Specialist Equipment You have access to a range of specialist, industry-standard psychology laboratories and computing environments including:

• Cognitive neuropsychology lab

• Virtual reality lab

• Research cubicles

• Driving simulator

• Eyetrackers

• Physiological data-acquisition system

• EEG

• Podcasting equipment

• Data-analysis software

• Experiment and survey-building software

Partnerships and Collaborations

• Our specialised forensic psychology units have been developed with a panel of industry professionals including from the probation service and police. They help to inform our authentic assessment strategy, which means your assignments reflect real-life tasks.

Your Student Experience

• Benefit from friendly, approachable staff, small class sizes and easy access to academic support.

• Get to know your peers and academics well by taking part in the School’s many social events, which run throughout the academic year in a dedicated space for psychology students.

• Learn from a highly experienced team who are active in the criminal justice sector, bringing real-life practice to their teaching and research.

• Take up the opportunity to apply your knowledge and new skills on placement such as working with our local probations service.

• Develop your professional research skills working on cutting-edge research projects with our academic staff through our Junior Research Assistant Scheme.

• Our research addresses real-life, day-to-day issues including the accuracy of eyewitnesses in identifying criminals; reading development; cognitive function in long COVID; and prevention of gender-based violence.

• Conduct supervised research on a forensic topic of your choice, and present it to your peers and psychology professionals at our annual Student Research Conference.

• Enjoy field trips to a range of organisations and locations including Luton Crown Court where you will observe real-life cases from the public gallery.

• Hear from guest speakers who share their experience and expertise at special events run by the School.

Areas of study include:

• Foundations to Psychology
• Introduction to Psychological Research Methods and Data Analysis
• Psychology and Criminal Behaviour
• Psychology in Every Day Life
• Biological and Cognitive Psychology
• Methods of Research in Psychology
• Psychology and Criminal Justice
• Social Processes and Lifespan Development
• Culture and Individual Differences
• Forensic Psychology in Practice
• Forensic Psychology Research Project
• Atypical Child and Adolescent Development: Theories and Applications
• Cognitive Neuropsychology
• Critical Social Psychology
• Occupational and Organisational Psychology
• Problem Solving
• Psychology of Language and Vision
• Psychology of Mental Health

Every effort is made to ensure this information is accurate at the point of publication on the UCAS website. For the most up-to-date information, please refer to our website.

Throughout your degree you will encounter a wide variety of types of assessment collectively designed to suit the variety of individual learning styles. Each assessment will provide the opportunity to offer you feedback to help with your development and inform the completion of your future assessments. There will be an opportunity in each year of your study to develop and refine a number of key academic skills, many of which will be transferable to the workplace.

These include team-working, report writing, oral presentations, constructing coherent written arguments, the ability to analyse, synthesise and evaluate complex information from a range of sources, reflective writing as well as personal and professional development planning. Whilst you will be expected to undertake a few examinations, the assessment diet is more heavily weighted in favour of coursework assignments.

The teaching reflects the BPS core curriculum with an emphasis on research and research methods as well as the other core areas of a Psychology curriculum.

Every effort is made to ensure this information is accurate at the point of publication on the UCAS website. For the most up-to-date information, please refer to our website:

https://www.beds.ac.uk/howtoapply/courses/undergraduate/next-year/forensic-psychology/