Enhance your criminal justice knowledge and develop your criminological imagination. You’ll focus on global contemporary crime and justice-related challenges.
Applications for this course starting September 2025 will open soon. Please check our website for updates.
This is a master’s degree with a strong global focus. You’ll critically analyse some of the biggest crime, deviance and criminal justice issues affecting society right now. By doing this, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by policymakers and law enforcement organisations, and the mechanisms that prevent and manage these.
Throughout the course, you’ll learn to enhance your research skills. This will allow you to assess topical issues and develop convincing arguments for change.
Upon successful completion of the degree, you’ll be equipped with the skills to progress or begin your career in the criminal justice sector in the UK or further afield.
You will study topics such as:
- international criminal justice and law
- contemporary criminological theory
- criminological ethnography
- technological developments in criminal justice
- state crime, human rights, and transitional justice
- violent crime
This course is suited to both recent graduates of undergraduate criminology degrees and people with social science or humanities undergraduate degrees.
Watch our webinar about this course
Industry insight to enhance your learning
Through a mixture of field trips and guest speakers, you’ll gain important first-hand insights into how criminal justice agencies function, how criminal justice policy is created, and how modern challenges are being addressed.
Bath’s Criminology expertise
The Department of Social & Policy Sciences has a proven track record of delivering high-ranking courses in criminology. Our BSc Criminology degree has been ranked in the top 3 in the UK for three years in a row by The Times & The Sunday Times Good University Guide.
This new master’s course builds on our proven record in this subject to further utilise the expertise and knowledge of our teaching staff.
Dr Jack Spicer (Director of Studies), Prof Sarah Moore, Dr Pete Manning, and Dr Tina Skinner talk about how their careers and expertise influence this course
Gain key skills
You will leave the course with:
- a critical understanding of some of the most pressing, urgent criminological issues and challenges in the 21st century
- practical skills in research, analysis and communication, and an understanding of how these can be applied within the fields of criminal justice and practice
- rich experience gained from working with people from a wide range of disciplinary, professional and national backgrounds
Graduate prospects
This course will prepare you for a variety of roles with organisations in the following areas:
- prison and probation services
- victim support
- offender management
- rehabilitation
- drug taking and drug policy reform
- young offenders and youth justice reform