Professional courses

Professional Doctorate in Criminal Justice (D Crim J)

This is a course which started in October 2007 which now has about 70 students pursuing a doctorate that is equivalent to the more traditional PhD. Students are drawn from a variety of backgrounds in criminal justice including:

• Policing
• Counter Fraud
• Security
• Youth Justice
• Prisons
• Probation
• The legal profession/Magistracy
• Forensic mental health

The professional doctorate comprises a structured four-year programme with a taught element delivered through a small number of workshops in Portsmouth for the first two years and then two years of supervised research leading to a thesis.

The overall aim of the course is to provide a framework for criminal justice professionals to reflect on and contribute to practice in their area of work. The emphasis is on developing researching professionals (which is distinct from the more traditional PhD route which aims to develop professional researchers).