What kind of degrees do you need to get to be involved in the criminal justice field?

Hi Axael,

• What's your ideal criminal justice career?

Before you even start thinking about earning your criminal justice degree, you need to examine your goals. What career you ultimately want to pursue will determine just which degree will best help you achieve your goals. You can earn either a Bachelor of Arts of a Bachelor of Science degree. The Bachelor of Arts in criminal justice includes a general liberal arts curriculum with classes in languages, literature and the humanities. The Bachelor of Science in criminal justice will be heavy in math, social science, biology and psychology. Both options will include coursework in the area of law, such as the details of evidence and court procedures. You will also study public policy history, debates, trends and influences. Your program will cover crime control methods and the various institutions involved in criminal justice. It will also give you an understanding of the dynamics of violence. Most schools also include classes in administration.

Criminal justice programs have some of the most diverse curriculums in higher education with classes that cover such broad areas as corrections, social sciences, psychology, courts and law enforcement. Here are some courses you may be required to take while earning your degree in Criminal Justice:

• Introduction to Criminal Justice

Criminal justice undergraduates are typically required to take an introductory course into criminal justice and the American legal system in their first semester. By teaching students basic principles of criminal justice and crime prevention, this class serves as a foundation for specialized studies in the future. This is where you will learn the general science and history behind the current criminal justice system as well as the individual functions of different criminal justice branches such as corrections, police, crime prevention, laws and courts.

• Understanding Corrections and Penology

After you finish learning about the different departments within the broader criminal justice system, you can move on to studying each one in more detail. While a course in penology is especially helpful to students who are interested in prison management jobs, learning more about corrections and incarceration is a requirement for all criminal justice majors regardless of their exact career goals. Crime, fair punishment and rehabilitation are the foundations of the modern criminal justice system. Understanding these principles and how they work together is important because they play a key role in public safety and crime prevention.

• Criminal Law

Criminal law is an intermediate course that involves learning the history and development of criminal law, the process of passing new laws and the relationship between criminal and constitutional law. In any criminal justice career, you will need to make decisions within the legal framework regardless of how you personally feel about the situation at hand. Understanding how laws are created and how they can lead to different outcomes in similar cases can help you learn how to think in terms of what is legal and not necessarily what is fair.

• Criminal Psychology

The purpose of the criminal justice system is maintaining order and public safety through law enforcement. In order to reach that goal, it is extremely important to understand what drives offenders to commit crimes in the first place. Without knowing why some people choose to break the law and others do not, effective crime prevention is not possible. Advanced criminal psychology courses cover a variety of complex issues including behavioral sciences, clinical conditions, deviant personality disorders and abnormal psychology theories.

In this link you´ll have more important information: http://www.criminaljusticeprograms.com/programs/bachelors-in-criminal-justice/

I wish you luck in your choices!!