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Criminology and Forensic Studies

Entry requirements


A level

A,B,B-B,B,B

120-128 points from 3 A levels.

122-128 Tariff points from the Access to HE Diploma.

Cambridge Pre-U score of 56-60.

GCSE/National 4/National 5

3 GCSEs at grade C or above to include English and Mathematics/3 GCSEs at grade 4 or above to include English and Mathematics.

International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme

29-30

29 points from the IB Diploma. 664 at Higher Level - 30 points from the IB Diploma. 665 at Higher Level.

Leaving Certificate - Higher Level (Ireland) (first awarded in 2017)

H3,H3,H3,H3,H3-H2,H2,H3,H3,H3

Acceptable when combined with other qualifications.

Acceptable when combined with other qualifications.

Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma (first teaching from September 2016)

DDM

120-128 Tariff points.

T Level

M

UCAS Tariff

120-128

120-128 points from 3 A levels, or equivalent.

120-128 points from the Advanced Welsh Baccalaureate including 2 A levels, plus the Advanced Skills Challenge Certificate.

About this course


This course has alternative study modes. Contact the university to find out how the information below might vary.

Course option

3years

Full-time | 2024

Other options

4 years | Sandwich | 2024

Subjects

Forensic science

Criminology

**This is a Connected Degree**

Portsmouth is the only University in the UK with the flexibility to choose when to do an optional paid placement or self-employed year. Either take a placement in your third year, or finish your studies first and complete a placement in your fourth year. You can decide if and when to take a placement after you've started your course.

**Overview**

If you want to help solve crimes, it pays to understand criminality from many different angles. This course gives you much broader skills, knowledge and experience than a more traditional ‘forensic science’ degree. Using facilities shared with a real police force, this degree is always relevant, innovative and up-to-date.

From crime scene to evidence lab to court room, you’ll find out how forensic investigation fits into the history, policy and practice of the criminal justice system. And you’ll study the causes of crime, learning what really makes a criminal.

**Course highlights**
- Develop specialist forensic skills in simulated crime scene and laboratory practical sessions

- Explore new experimental techniques including the use of Virtual Reality (VR), inspired by innovative VR research at the University of Portsmouth

- Learn from criminology, probation and policing experts who are actively involved in industry, and who shape its future with ground-breaking research in areas like forensic interview techniques and wildlife crime

- Benefit from our strong partnerships and links with the criminal justice and forensic investigation industry

- Hear from guest speakers such as fire investigators, crime scene managers, pathologists, specialist police officers, firearm officers and forensic archaeologists

- Tailor your degree from a wide range of modules, including crime and mental health, hate crime, dangerous offenders and public protection

- Gain pre-entry qualifications for careers in the police or probation service, and develop skills in problem solving and analysis that all kinds of employers value

"If you want to look at the practical side of crime this is the course for you. It shows you so many different roles that you wouldn't even think existed. The course is really practical too: looking at police investigations and how they're run was so interesting." – Robyn Juniper , BSc Hons Criminology & Forensic Studies student

**Careers and opportunities**

Because this course blends criminology and forensic studies, you’ll graduate with a particularly broad range of careers open to you. Your lecturers can help you identify the options that excite you most, so you can choose to study modules that fit your ambitions.

You’ll be especially well-prepared for the wide variety of criminal justice careers where forensic awareness plays a key role – from forensic practitioner in the police, probation or prison services, through to rewarding areas of expertise like community safety, crime prevention and criminological research. More broadly, the impressive problem-solving skills you develop could prove valuable in all kinds of careers.

What jobs can you do with a criminology and forensic studies degree?

Our graduates have gone on to roles including:

- crime scene investigator

- investigative data analyst

- police officer

- intelligence researcher

- probation officer

- youth offending support officer

- emergency planning officer

- prison officer

- forensic and other laboratories

- teaching (with further training)

You could also do postgraduate study in areas such as forensic science.

Ongoing careers support

Get experience while you study, with support to find part-time jobs, volunteering opportunities, and work experience.

Towards the end of your degree and for up to five years after graduation, you’ll receive one-to-one support from our Graduate Recruitment Consultancy to help you find your perfect role.

Modules

Year 1
Core modules in this year include:
- Crime Scene and Forensic Investigation
- Criminal Justice
- Essential Skills for Criminologists
- Psychology for Criminologists
- Understanding Criminology

There are no optional modules in this year.

Year 2
Core modules in this year include:
- Forensic Evidence Analysis
- Forensic Evidence Interpretation
- Questioning Criminology
- Researching Criminology

Optional modules in this year currently include:
- Crimes of the Powerful
- Empire and its Afterlives in Britain, Europe and Africa
- Engaged Citizenship in Humanities and Social Sciences
- Firearms Investigation
- Forensic Linguistics
- Forensic Developmental Psychology
- Gang Crime
- Global Environmental Justice
- Global Security
- Hate Crime
- Intercultural Perspectives on Communication
- Introduction to Teaching
- Marketing and Communication
- Modern Foreign Language
- Modernity and Globalisation
- Nationalism and Migration: Chaos, Crisis and the Everyday
- News, Discourse and Media
- Penology and Prison
- Policing and Society
- Principles of Economic Crime Investigation
- Professional Experience
- Psychology and Security
- Space, Place and Being
- Transitional Justice and Human Rights
- Underworlds: Crime, Deviance and Punishment in Britain, 1500-1900
- Victims of Crime: Key Players in Criminal Justice
- Wildlife Crime: Threats and Response
- Youth Crime, Youth Justice

Placement year (Optional)
On this course, you can do an optional work placement year between your 2nd and 3rd years to get valuable experience working in industry. We’ll help you secure a work placement that fits your situation and ambitions. You’ll get mentoring and support throughout the year.

Year 3
Core modules in this year include:
- Dissertation / Major Project
- Management of Criminal Investigations
- The Future of Forensic Investigations

Optional modules in this year currently include:
- Black Criminology, Race and the Criminal Justice System
- Contemporary Terrorism and the Global Response
- Crime and New Technologies: Theory and Practice
- Dangerous Offenders and Public Protection
- Economic Crime and Fraud Examination
- Forensic Psychology: Investigation
- Forensic Taphonomy
- Gender and Crime
- Green Crime and Environmental Justice
- Information Security Management
- Intelligence Analysis
- Introduction to Teaching
- Miscarriages of Justice
- Money Laundering and Compliance
- Policing: Communities, Intelligence and Information
- Policing: Law, Policy and Practice
- Political Extremism
- Professional Development: Recruiters and Candidates
- Professional Experience
- Treatment and Rehabilitation of Offenders
- True Crime - The Making of a Genre

We use the best and most current research and professional practice alongside feedback from our students to make sure course content is relevant to your future career or further studies.

Therefore, some course content may change over time to reflect changes in the discipline or industry and some optional modules may not run every year. If a module doesn’t run, we’ll let you know as soon as possible and help you choose an alternative module.

Assessment methods

You’ll be assessed through:

coursework
reports
presentations
group projects
a dissertation

You’ll be able to test your skills and knowledge informally before you do assessments that count towards your final mark.

You can get feedback on all practice and formal assessments so you can improve in the future.

The way you’re assessed may depend on the modules you select. As a guide, students on this course last year were typically assessed as follows:

Year 1 students: 27% by written exams, 7% by practical exams and 66% by coursework
Year 2 students: 3% by practical exams and 97% by coursework
Year 3 students: 8% by written exams, 5% by practical exams and 87% by coursework

Tuition fees

Select where you currently live to see what you'll pay:

Channel Islands
£9,250
per year
England
£9,250
per year
EU
£9,250
per year
International
£17,200
per year
Northern Ireland
£9,250
per year
Republic of Ireland
£9,250
per year
Scotland
£9,250
per year
Wales
£9,250
per year

The Uni


Course location:

University of Portsmouth

Department:

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Read full university profile

What students say


We've crunched the numbers to see if overall student satisfaction here is high, medium or low compared to students studying this subject(s) at other universities.

81%
Forensic science
78%
Criminology

How do students rate their degree experience?

The stats below relate to the general subject area/s at this university, not this specific course. We show this where there isn’t enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.

Forensic and archaeological sciences

Teaching and learning

81%
Staff make the subject interesting
94%
Staff are good at explaining things
79%
Ideas and concepts are explored in-depth
75%
Opportunities to apply what I've learned

Assessment and feedback

Feedback on work has been timely
Feedback on work has been helpful
Staff are contactable when needed
Good advice available when making study choices

Resources and organisation

81%
Library resources
93%
IT resources
85%
Course specific equipment and facilities
64%
Course is well organised and has run smoothly

Student voice

Staff value students' opinions
Feel part of a community on my course

Who studies this subject and how do they get on?

94%
UK students
6%
International students
17%
Male students
83%
Female students
77%
2:1 or above
9%
First year drop out rate

Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)

C
B
C

Sociology

Teaching and learning

78%
Staff make the subject interesting
89%
Staff are good at explaining things
78%
Ideas and concepts are explored in-depth
69%
Opportunities to apply what I've learned

Assessment and feedback

Feedback on work has been timely
Feedback on work has been helpful
Staff are contactable when needed
Good advice available when making study choices

Resources and organisation

78%
Library resources
89%
IT resources
82%
Course specific equipment and facilities
68%
Course is well organised and has run smoothly

Student voice

Staff value students' opinions
Feel part of a community on my course

Who studies this subject and how do they get on?

94%
UK students
6%
International students
26%
Male students
74%
Female students
73%
2:1 or above
16%
First year drop out rate

Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)

C
B
C

After graduation


The stats in this section relate to the general subject area/s at this university – not this specific course. We show this where there isn't enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.

Forensic and archaeological sciences

What are graduates doing after six months?

This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.

£22,000
med
Average annual salary
97%
high
Employed or in further education

Top job areas of graduates

18%
Engineering professionals
15%
Science, engineering and production technicians
11%
Natural and social science professionals

Sociology

What are graduates doing after six months?

This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.

£21,000
high
Average annual salary
99%
high
Employed or in further education
55%
high
Employed in a role where degree was essential or beneficial

Top job areas of graduates

16%
Welfare and housing associate professionals
13%
Protective service occupations
9%
Business, finance and related associate professionals

We have quite a lot of sociology graduates, although numbers fell last year. But graduates still do pretty well. Most sociology graduates go straight into work when they complete their degrees, and a lot of graduates go into jobs in social professions such as recruitment, education, community and youth work, and housing. An important option for a sociology graduate is social work - and we're short of people willing to take this challenging but rewarding career. Sociology is a flexible degree and you can find graduates from the subject in pretty much every reasonable job — obviously, you don't find many doctors or engineers, but you do find them in finance, the media, healthcare, marketing and even IT. Sociology graduates taking further study often branch out into other qualifications, like teaching, law, psychology, HR and even maths, so don’t think a sociology degree restricts you to just one set of options.

What about your long term prospects?

Looking further ahead, below is a rough guide for what graduates went on to earn.

Sorry, no information to show

This is usually because there were too few respondents in the data we receive to be able to provide results about the subject at this university.

Sociology

The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.

£25k

£25k

£25k

£25k

£29k

£29k

Note: this data only looks at employees (and not those who are self-employed or also studying) and covers a broad sample of graduates and the various paths they've taken, which might not always be a direct result of their degree.

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Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF):

We've received this information from the Department for Education, via Ucas. This is how the university as a whole has been rated for its quality of teaching: gold silver or bronze. Note, not all universities have taken part in the TEF.

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This information comes from the National Student Survey, an annual student survey of final-year students. You can use this to see how satisfied students studying this subject area at this university, are (not the individual course).

This is the percentage of final-year students at this university who were "definitely" or "mostly" satisfied with their course. We've analysed this figure against other universities so you can see whether this is high, medium or low.

Have a question about this info? Learn more here

This information is from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), for undergraduate students only.

You can use this to get an idea of who you might share a lecture with and how they progressed in this subject, here. It's also worth comparing typical A-level subjects and grades students achieved with the current course entry requirements; similarities or differences here could indicate how flexible (or not) a university might be.

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Post-six month graduation stats:

This is from the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education Survey, based on responses from graduates who studied the same subject area here.

It offers a snapshot of what grads went on to do six months later, what they were earning on average, and whether they felt their degree helped them obtain a 'graduate role'. We calculate a mean rating to indicate if this is high, medium or low compared to other universities.

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Graduate field commentary:

The Higher Education Careers Services Unit have provided some further context for all graduates in this subject area, including details that numbers alone might not show

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The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset combines HRMC earnings data with student records from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

While there are lots of factors at play when it comes to your future earnings, use this as a rough timeline of what graduates in this subject area were earning on average one, three and five years later. Can you see a steady increase in salary, or did grads need some experience under their belt before seeing a nice bump up in their pay packet?

Have a question about this info? Learn more here