Sociology with Criminology
University of Portsmouth
UCAS Code: LM40 | Bachelor of Science (with Honours) - BSc (Hons)
Entry requirements
A level
96-112 points, to include a minimum of 2 A levels.
96-112 Tariff points from the Access to HE Diploma.
Cambridge Pre-U score of 42-46.
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
25 points from the IB Diploma, to include 3 Higher Level subjects.
Leaving Certificate - Higher Level (Ireland) (first awarded in 2017)
H3,H4,H4,H4,H4-H3,H3,H3,H3,H4
Acceptable when combined with other qualifications.
Acceptable when combined with other qualifications.
Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma (first teaching from September 2016)
96-112 Tariff points to include a minimum of 2 Advanced Highers.
Acceptable when combined with other qualifications.
T Level
UCAS Tariff
96-112 points, to include a minimum of 2 A levels, or equivalent.
96-112 points from the Advanced Welsh Baccalaureate including 1 A level, 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.
**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**
People are not born criminals. On this course, you’ll explore how human relationships and social structures influence behaviour. You’ll discover how power dynamics and inequalities create crime. And you’ll see people who break and enforce the law in a new light.
With many diverse options to choose from, you can tailor this BSc (Hons) Sociology with Criminology degree around topics that fascinate you – from identity issues, such as race and sexuality, to issues of experience, such as happiness, gang crime or serial killing.
Modules are taught by experts who draw directly from their research activity – to give you the latest knowledge in the field. .
Course highlights
- Explore topics informed by our latest research, from a curriculum constantly updated to reflect new ideas in areas as diverse as black studies, gender, class and inequality
- Learn how to persuade others through evidence-based argument, by taking a critical look at different ideas of society, crime and justice
- Go beyond issues of crime to explore the human experience more broadly – from migration to inequalities, from food to celebrity culture
- Practice analysing human behaviour through social research, so you can gain insights to help improve people’s wellbeing
- Customise your degree to match your ambitions: some modules reduce the amount to time you’d need to train for a policing career or as a probation officer
**Careers and opportunities**
Studying a combination of sociology and criminology opens up a wide range of potential careers, both in and out of the criminal justice system. Whether you’re attracted to careers that involve working closely with other people, or roles that call for rigorous and structured thinking, you’ll be well prepared.
This is because you’ll graduate with a set of skills that are transferable to all kinds of professions. Those skills include:
- insight into people and social dynamics
- critical thinking and analysis
- qualitative and quantitative research
- the ability to shape and communicate an argument
For proof that a wide range of employers value these skills, look at the diversity of roles our recent graduates have taken on. They include: police officer, recruitment consultant, litigation paralegal, digital forensics assistant and victim support caseworker.
What areas can you work in with a sociology with criminology degree?
You’ll graduate ready to pursue a career or further training in areas such as:
- health and social care
- law enforcement
- probation
- counselling
- advertising, marketing and media
- teaching and lecturing
- human resources and recruitment
- business administration and personnel management
You could also progress into research-related jobs or pursue further research and study at postgraduate level.
What jobs can you do with a sociology with criminology degree?
Job roles you could take on include:
- social researcher
- probation officer
- investigative analyst
- police officer
- human resource manager
- counsellor
- teacher
- charity worker
- detention custody officer
Modules
Year 1
Core modules in this year include:
- Criminal Justice – 20 credits
- Developing Your Sociological Imagination – 40 credits
- Research Design and Analysis – 20 credits
- Theorising Social Life – 20 credits
- Understanding Criminology – 20 credits
There are no optional modules in this year.
Year 2
Core modules in this year include:
- Doing Sociological Research – 20 credits
- Questioning Criminology – 20 credits
Optional modules in this year include (20 credits each):
- Challenging Global Inequality
- Consumer Society: Critical Themes and Issues
- Crimes of the Powerful
- Digital Cultures: Exploring the Digital in the Humanities and Social Sciences
- Emotions and Social Life
- Empire and its Afterlives in Britain, Europe and Africa
- Engaged Citizenship in Humanities and Social Sciences
- Equality or Liberation? Theorising Social Justice
- Family, Career and Generation
- Food, Culture, and Society
- Gang Crime
- Gender and Sexuality
- Global Environmental Justice
- Global Security
- Global, State and Corporate Security
- Hate Crime
- Health, Wellbeing, and Happiness
- Intercultural Perspectives on Communication
- Marketing and Communication
- Modern Foreign Language (Institution-wide Language Programme)
- Modernity and Globalisation
- Nationalism and Migration: Chaos, Crisis And the Everyday
- News, Discourse and Media
- Penology and Prison
- Police, Law and Community
- Policing and Society
- Principles of Economic Crime Investigation
- Professional Experience
- Race and Racism
- Researching Criminology
- Risk and Society
- Social Power, Elites and Dissent
- Sociology of Culture: Taste, Value and Celebrity
- Space, Place and Being
- The Sociology of Education
- Transitional Justice and Human Rights
- Understanding Personal Life
- Victims of Crime: Key Players in Criminal Justice
- Wildlife Crime: Threats and Response
- Work, Employment and Society
- Youth Crime, Youth Justice
Year 3
Core modules in this year are:
- Sociology Dissertation or Major Project – 40 credits
You'll also need to choose 2 optional sociology modules and 2 criminology modules.
Optional sociology modules in this year are (20 credits each):
- Challenging Global Inequality
- Consumer Society: Critical Themes and Issues
- Emotions and Social Life
- Equality or Liberation? Theorising Social Justice
- Family, Career and Generation
- Food, Culture and Society
- Gender and Sexuality
- Health, Wellbeing and Happiness
- Introduction to Teaching
- Nationalism and Migration: Chaos, Crisis and the Everyday
- Professional Development
- Professional Experience: Recruiters and Candidates
- Race and Racism
- Social Power, Elites and Dissent
- Sociology of Culture: Taste, Value and Celebrity
- Understanding Personal Life
Optional criminology modules are:
- 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
- Gender and Crime
- Green Crime and Environmental Justice
- Intelligence Analysis
- Miscarriages of Justice
- Money Laundering and Compliance
- Policing: Communities, Intelligence and Information
- Policing: Law, Policy and Practice
- Political Extremism
- Professional Development: Recruiters and Candidates
- 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:
- written essays
- group and individual presentations
- group and individual projects
- seminar participation
- examinations
- a 10,000 word dissertation
You can get feedback on all practice and formal assessments so you can improve in the future.
Tuition fees
Select where you currently live to see what you'll pay:
The Uni
University of Portsmouth
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
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.
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.
Sociology
Teaching and learning
Assessment and feedback
Resources and organisation
Student voice
Who studies this subject and how do they get on?
Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)
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.
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.
Top job areas of graduates
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.
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
£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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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.
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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?
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