Criminal Psychology

Overview

On this Criminal Psychology course from the University of Portsmouth , you'll get to analyse the criminal justice system with a view to making positive change. You'll explore complex behaviours, such as police interviewing and deception detection, and gain insight into courtroom psychology and jury decision making. 

You'll learn how taking a psychological approach, such as through offender profiling, improves criminal investigations, and look at issues like offender rehabilitation and the links between offending behaviour and mental health.

You can study either full or part-time on campus, or part-time by distance learning, so you can fit your studies around your work schedule. You'll also have the chance to customise your qualification by choosing to combine your study of criminal psychology with another of our Criminal Justice Master's courses.

When you graduate, you'll be ready to work with offenders and/or victims within any area of the criminal justice system, including policing, law enforcement, probation and intelligence analysis.

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

Careers this Master’s prepares you for

Criminal psychology draws on 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 Master's in Criminal Psychology, you'll gain a tailored postgraduate qualification to add to your undergraduate degree, or to back up your existing career knowledge from the field. You'll delve deep into the subjects you choose to study through research, gaining an evidence-based perspective and a greater ability to be analytical and evaluative.