Psychology courses

About Criminal Psychology Msc in University of Portsmouth

If you're looking to build on your undergraduate studies in psychology and pursue a career in criminal psychology, or you're already working in the field and want to further advance your career, our MSc Criminal Psychology degree course will give you the knowledge and skills you need to reach your goals in this challenging arena.

Criminal psychology draws in elements from psychology, criminology and criminal justice, with the aim of studying offenders and offending behaviour, to improve the effectiveness of criminal investigations. On this course, you'll get to analyse the criminal justice system with a view to improving outcomes, understanding complex behaviours like police interviewing, and detecting deception, as well as gaining further expertise in courtroom psychology and jury decision making.

You'll also learn how to improve criminal investigations by adding a psychological component such as offender profiling, and look at issues like offender rehabilitation, and the links between offending behaviour and mental health.

This course can be studied either full or part-time, either on campus or through distance learning.

You'll study in our Institute of Criminal Justice Studies and learn from our team of criminal psychology specialists, so that when you graduate, you'll have the skills you need for a career as a criminal psychologist, working with offenders, working with victims or within law enforcement agencies.

This course is not accredited by the British Psychological Society (BPS).

Careers and opportunities

You'll graduate with the skills and knowledge for a successful career in the field of criminal psychology.

Career opportunities include:

• Police force
• Law enforcement
• Crime analysis
• Local authorities
• Research
• Crime scene investigation
• Social work
• Prison service
• Working with offenders
• Working with victims
• Further academic study

We'll provide you with as much support as possible in finding employment through close industrial contacts, careers events, recruitment fairs and individual advice.

Academic qualification equivalents

• For entry to our Master's programmes, you will generally need to have a Bachelor's degree with at least 2nd Class Honours to be considered.

  You may be admitted to Master's programmes with a lower level degree if you have work experience relevant to the degree applied for. Find out more about Recognised Prior Learning.

English language requirements (one of the below):

• IELTS: A  minimum of IELTS band 6.5–7.0, with no component below 6.0.
• TOEFL iBT: For most of our Master's degrees, you need a score of 91 with a minimum of:20 in Reading 19 in Listening 21 in Speaking 20 in Writing.
• PTE:  At least 61 points, with a minimum of 54 in each component

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