Overview

Developed originally in the 1990s, in partnership with Her Majesty’s Prison Service (HMPS), Applied Criminology, Penology and Management at University of Cambridge has since broadened to welcome criminal justice professionals from probation and community justice, the voluntary and third sectors, the legal community, and allied professions such as psychologists and psychiatrists. We welcome colleagues from beyond England and Wales, including from elsewhere in Europe and beyond. We take an inclusive approach to recruitment, which focuses on candidates’ motivations, skills, experience and potential. We warmly welcome applications to study from people who may have little previous experience of formal education, as well as people who have lived experience of criminal justice involvement or supervision.

What you'll learn

The content of our course reflects the diversity of the socio-political, professional and educational backgrounds of our students. We aim to equip students with cutting-edge knowledge of criminological theory and research, and provide high levels of academic support so that students can develop independent research skills to locate, interpret, analyse and evaluate research, and explore and apply it in their work as senior criminal justice professionals, including through an independent research dissertation in the second year of the course. 

Through an intensive programme of four eight-day and two five-day residential blocks in Cambridge, across two years of study, students are introduced to key criminological concepts, including legitimacy, compliance, desistance and deterrence, key criminal justice policy and practice debates, and key methodological skills, including qualitative and quantitative approaches, ethics, and insider research. Ideas are explored ‘in context’, with course content designed to provoke reflection on some of the most urgent current challenges in criminal justice, including by reference to long-standing, ongoing debates and empirical knowledge in the field. 

We encourage students to think differently and broadly – historically, comparatively, and across the criminal justice system as a whole – about the contemporary nature and experience of criminal justice theory, policy and practice.