Criminology: What Do You Really Study?
Crime, enforcement and rehabilitation - to investigate why crimes occur and how society responds to them.
What Do You Study in Criminology? Core Subjects, Year by Year
What do the degree courses cover?
Open a course to learn about its main topics and see what the work looks like in practice.
What do you learn in the course?Introduction to Criminology?
The course presents how crime is defined, measured and explained and how society reacts to it. You are familiar with police data and victim surveys, central theories and institutions of enforcement, law, punishment and rehabilitation.
Main topics
- Definition of crime and deviance
- Crime measurement and data
- Personal and social explanations
- Enforcement, punishment and rehabilitation
What does it look like in practice?
For example, comparing complaint data with a victim survey to understand why the reported crime rate is not the whole story.
What do you learn in the course?Introduction to the psychology of criminology?
You learn basics in behavior, learning, cognition, emotion and personality that help understand decisions and risk situations. The course emphasizes the limitations of a single psychological explanation and the connection to the environment.
Main topics
- learning and decision making
- emotion and motivation
- Personality and development
- Social behavior and mental health
What does it look like in practice?
For example, analyze how reward, peer pressure, and self-control can work together in the same behavior.
What do you learn in the course?Sociology to Criminology?
The course examines how institutions, communities, inequality and norms shape deviance and social control. You learn to connect a personal life path with a neighborhood, job market, family and policy.
Main topics
- institutions and norms
- Inequality and stratification
- communities and networks
- Deviation, labeling and supervision
What does it look like in practice?
For example, examining how opportunities, supervision and trust relationships in the neighborhood affect patterns of crime and enforcement.
What do you learn in the course?Statistics for Criminology?
Learn to describe crime data and draw conclusions from samples under conditions of uncertainty. They deal with distributions, rates, hypothesis testing and relationships between variables and practice critical interpretation of enforcement data.
Main topics
- Description of data and classes
- Sampling and probability
- Estimation and testing of hypotheses
- Correlation and regression
What does it look like in practice?
For example, they check whether a decrease in the number of arrests reflects a decrease in crimes or a change in enforcement policy.
What do you learn in the course?Theories in crime?
Compare biological, psychological and sociological explanations for criminal behavior. Learn about stress, social learning, supervision, labeling and opportunity and examine what kind of evidence supports each approach.
Main topics
- Social learning and supervision
- stress and anomie
- Labeling and critical criminology
- Choice, routine and opportunity
What does it look like in practice?
For example, the same phenomenon is explained using two theories and different policies are proposed that result from each explanation.
Frequently Asked Questions About Criminology
Is a degree in Criminology difficult?
There is no single answer — difficulty depends on your background, the institution, and your chosen study pace. According to this site's estimate, The degree has a relatively small quantitative component, so mathematics is usually not the main obstacle, and some of the reading material is in English. A good way to assess fit is to review the course map on this page: if most of the subjects interest you, the effort will usually feel worthwhile.
How long does a degree in Criminology take?
Usually 3 years (Single-major, double-major, or combined program). Exact duration varies by institution and depends on course load and the track you choose.
Criminology or Sociology and Anthropology — which is right for me?
The degrees most closely related to Criminology are Sociology and Anthropology, Political Science and International Relations, and Education and Teaching. Their differences are usually in emphasis rather than the overall subject, so the fastest way to decide is to compare their course maps — what you actually study in each program, year by year. You can also open the degree comparison tool to view the differences side by side.
What do you do with a criminology degree?
Probation and offender rehabilitation, youth justice, crime prevention in local government, corporate security and intelligence analysis, or continuing to law or social work. Note: police careers generally do not require this specific degree.
Is criminology like on TV?
Not quite — fewer crime scenes, more theory and data: why people offend, how justice systems respond, what actually works in prevention and rehabilitation. Forensic science is a separate, lab-based field.
What should you combine it with?
The strong combinations: law (criminal practice), psychology (rehabilitation and treatment) or social work. The combination sets the career direction — criminology alone is general.
Where can you study this?
Criminology is taught at universities worldwide, often within sociology or law departments, usually combined with another subject.