Psychology, Crime and Justice (with Placement)

Our accredited course brings to life this exciting field, exploring how psychology can help us understand the minds of offenders, criminal behaviours and why people commit crimes, with reference to specific crimes. You also focus on crime investigation and what happens in the courtroom in areas such as eyewitness behaviour; detecting deceptive behaviours; and exploring how juries reach their verdicts. In your final year, you develop the advanced skills needed to assess offenders and put in place interventions.

Professional Practice Year
Take your course over four years and include a Professional Practice Year after your second year of studies. It is an opportunity to apply your learning in the workplace while enhancing your knowledge and skills through fee-free paid practice. It also builds your CV and industry contacts with many students progressing to employment within their practice-year organisation or institution.

Course Accreditation/Industry Endorsement

This course is accredited by the British Psychological Society (BPS). Graduating from a BPS-accredited degree with a 2nd-class Honours or above makes you eligible for Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership (GBC) of the Society.

Facilities and Specialist Equipment
You have access to a range of specialist, industry-standard psychology laboratories and computing environments including:

• Cognitive neuropsychology lab

• Virtual reality lab

• Research cubicles

• Driving simulator

• Eyetrackers

• Physiological data-acquisition system

• EEG

• Podcasting equipment

• Data-analysis software

• Experiment and survey-building software

Partnerships and Collaborations

• Our specialised forensic psychology units have been developed with a panel of industry professionals including from the probation service and police. They help to inform our authentic assessment strategy, which means your assignments reflect real-life tasks.

Your Student Experience

• Benefit from friendly, approachable staff, small class sizes and easy access to academic support.

• Get to know your peers and academics well by taking part in the School’s many social events, which run throughout the academic year in a dedicated space for psychology students.

• Learn from a highly experienced team who are active in the criminal justice sector, bringing real-life practice to their teaching and research.

• Take up the opportunity to apply your knowledge and new skills on placement such as working with our local probations service.

• Develop your professional research skills working on cutting-edge research projects with our academic staff through our Junior Research Assistant Scheme.

• Our research addresses real-life, day-to-day issues including the accuracy of eyewitnesses in identifying criminals; reading development; cognitive function in long COVID; and prevention of gender-based violence.

• Conduct supervised research on a forensic topic of your choice, and present it to your peers and psychology professionals at our annual Student Research Conference.

• Enjoy field trips to a range of organisations and locations including Luton Crown Court where you will observe real-life cases from the public gallery.

• Hear from guest speakers who share their experience and expertise at special events run by the School.