Community and Criminal Justice Leadership (Taught)

The Masters in Community and Criminal Justice Leadership programme aims to equip you with the skills, knowledge and understanding of current issues and debates necessary to become effective leaders across the Criminal Justice System. This will include knowledge and understanding of the Criminal Justice System as well as understanding theories that inform current practice.

We have designed the programme to support the university's commitment to the public good and UN SDG 16 by equipping our graduates to become leaders in prison, probation, police, youth custody, and third sector roles. We aim to empower our graduates to foster fairness and safety in society,  and lead organisations where discrimination, abuse of power, and harmful practices are eliminated.

You will develop skills in conducting comprehensive background investigations, analysis, research, and inquiries using established methods. These skills will be applied to support the personal development and practices of the teams you will lead, such as fostering reflective and anti-discriminatory practices.

You will graduate from the programme with the skills, knowledge and experience required to fulfil your career aspirations, and secure employment as a senior leader across the criminal justice system and beyond. The course aims to meet the professional development needs of staff working across the Justice sector who either aspire to be in or are currently in leadership and management roles within HMPPS; primarily Prison, Probation, Youth Custody and Policing.

Key features

• Benefit from synchronous online teaching sessions delivered by a team of nationally and internationally renowned research active academics.

• Study flexibly through online learning, allowing you to balance your learning with personal and work commitments.

• Gain insights through personalised coaching sessions led by qualified coaches, offering aspiring leaders the opportunity to develop solutions to challenges and reflect on current issues affecting leadership in the sector.

• Benefit from a Personal Tutor who will offer both academic guidance and pastoral care throughout your learning journey, helping to foster your personal development.

• Our Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approach offers a diverse range of teaching and learning styles, ensuring that different learning needs are met.

• Develop the skills and attributes needed to take up senior leadership positions across multiple sectors including the Probation Service, Prison Service, Youth Justice and the Police.

Modules

Leading Diverse Teams in a Complex Environment (45 credits): This module will focus on communicating specialist knowledge and understanding of leadership and management theory, policy and practice within the Criminal Justice System context.

Crime, Community Justice and Reflective Practice (15 credits): This module will look at concepts of justice and systems of criminal justice and think about how to lead in criminal justice. It will look at how inequalities (such as race, gender, and social class contribute to crime and victimhood and consider the lived experience of the criminal justice system. It will establish reflective practice as a key skill and apply reflection to real world issues.

Risk Management and Desistance Approaches (15 credits): This module presents academic research, knowledge and understanding to better equip professionals to examine, discuss, debate and reflect upon the core components of risk management and desistance approaches.

Penology and the Sentence of the Court (15 credits): This module will engage with penological theories and will compare and contrast the role of formal and informal sanctions in both the custodial and community environments. Learners will consider issues related to risk and power in prisons and relate this to their own professional practice.

Advanced Criminological Theory (15 credits): The module enables learners to develop an understanding of key schools of criminological thought that underpin perspectives on crime, deviance and social control. Learners will be encouraged to apply these explanations to everyday practices in the Criminal Justice System. Learners will develop a critical awareness of the rehabilitation paradigm and its place within the history of effective practice in community justice. .

Dissertation (45 credits): An opportunity for learners to design and undertake a substantial piece of independent study on a topic of their own choice. Learners will develop their knowledge and understanding of Action research and the role of the Practitioner-Academic as a particular type of applied criminologist.

Option Modules: Depending on how many learners we have on the cohort, we may be able to offer learners a choice of module from a number of options which will run subject to efficiency and availability.

The optional modules include:

• Probation Practice and Management (30 credits): This module will start by examining issues that future leaders will need to appraise themselves of including the evolving landscape of Probation in England and Wales before moving on to consider how these changes have affected professional identity.

  1. Leadership and Management in Contemporary Policing (30 credits): The purpose of the module is to critically examine and evaluate the key issues and challenges facing contemporary policing in a civil, neo-liberal, welfare society.

  2. Leadership and Management in Contemporary Criminal Investigation (30 credits): The purpose of the module is to critically examine and evaluate the key issues and challenges facing contemporary criminal investigation in a civil, neo-liberal, welfare society.

  3. Global Criminal Justice Perspectives (30 credits): The purpose of the module is to place criminal justice development in a global context and to explore the implications for strategy, policy and practice. The module will examine and analyse the international justice framework of human rights, United Nations Treaty and charter-based mechanisms, the impact of the globalisation of crime, finance, narcotics and the internet, people smuggling, exploitation of women and children and accessing international organisations, identifying leadership and management links for academic, professional and management development.

https://www.dmu.ac.uk/study/courses/postgraduate-courses/community-and-criminal-justice-leadership/community-criminal-justice-leadership.aspx

This is an online learning programme which means that all of the teaching, tutorials, coaching and action learning sets are delivered and facilitated online.

Teaching and Learning

You will access your learning through a wide range of technology that will enable you to access information, develop knowledge and communicate with students and programme staff. These include the university’s online learning system – Learning Zone and MS Teams

You will engage in online discussions, tutorials and other activities with learners from other areas and regions, as well as accessing a range of distance learning resources, for example interactive module materials, module readings and exercises, tasks and activities intended to develop the learner’s knowledge and understanding. Learners will be able to contact programme staff by telephone, MS Teams and email.

A key element of our delivery is our use of Interactive Study Guides (ISGs) which accompany all modules.  ISGs cover a full exploration of the key learning for the module and reflecting the different skills and criticality required as learners progress through the academic levels.

Because of our team’s commitment to Universal Design for Learning (UDL), each module has different assessment methods to account for our learner’s different learning styles. These may include:

• Critical reflection essay

• Academic assignments

• Written case study

• Presentations

Each module has learning outcomes that will be demonstrated in the successful completion of the assignments.