Criminology, completely useless?

Crimeguy
Fri, 20 Sep 2013 16:36:40 +0000

*** THIS POST IS WRITTEN BY A CANADIAN CRIMINOLOGY GRADUATE NOT AN AMERICAN ONE. Also my recommendation for which courses you should take is primarily concerned with students who wish to establish their careers in the Criminal Justice System or in jobs related to the social sciences and research******

I graduated as a crim major and I am employed as a Criminal Intelligence Analyst.

Experience has shown me that the criminology undergraduate degree generally prepares you for employment in the Criminal Justice Field with the following job prospects

Police Officer
Peace Officer
Correctional Officer
Probation Officer
Loss Prevention Officer/Investigator
Working at Drug Courts
Intelligence Officer and other Jobs at CSIS
Border Officer
Working at a Security & Investigation unit for a bank.
Fraud Analyst
Civilian Law Enforcement Careers (Working in the Evidence room, Forensics’ Technician)
and of course Criminal Intelligence Analyst

Other jobs related to the crim major is to do research in the criminal justice system for the Federal or, more likely, the Provincial governments. Jobs are typically listed as;

Research Analysts
Research Assistants
(Please check out your provincial job board as there may be jobs that may have a different job title attached to it)

These research jobs may require you to have a graduate degree in Criminology. So I advise if you love to do research in criminology and want to get paid to do it, you will typically need a graduate degree to be competitive in the job selection process.

*******A word of advice to all potential University Students: THERE IS NO USELESS DEGREE ONLY USELESS PROGRAMS AND IGNORANT STUDENTS. Every major has a set of skills that is needed for society to function and skills that are marketable. It is your job to find out which skills you both want and need to do the job that you want and to have the career that you want. So rather than simply selecting theoretical courses, select courses that will help improve your skillset in your chosen field. I recommend everyone taking the following classes to improve your chances of not only getting a job in the Criminal Justice system but to improve your chances of getting promoted in your CJ job and to make yourself marketable for other jobs in case you don’t want to work in the Criminal Justice field any longer when you graduate.


Two to four English courses. (Write as many papers as you can, edit as many papers as you can and analyze as much pieces of literature as you can. Classes like these will help build your Critical thinking skills which is the most marketable to have next to technical skills)
Introductory Statistics
Intermediate Statistics (Not Required but recommended)
Introductory Computer Science (Master Microsoft Office!!!)
Criminology
Criminal Justice in Canada
Quantitative Methods
Qualitative Methods
Data management or data analytics classes. (Only if they are offered but not required).
Introductory Econometrics (Not required, but highly highly recommended if you have the perquisites to do it. TRUST ME!)


Master, or just have a good familiarity, of the following computer programs in your undergraduate study or in your spare time

SPSS
SAS
STATA
(Great thing about these programs is that if you master one its very easy to learn another one).

If the program doesn’t have some or all of the classes listed, especially Research Methods, Statistics, and Computer classes RUN. RUN TO A UNIVERSITY THAT DOES!

Most Importantly is LIST THE COURSES THAT ARE RELEVANT TO THE JOB POSITION, THAT YOU HAVE TAKEN IN UNIVERSITY, ON YOUR RESUME! Sorry for using caps lock but I cannot stress this enough. For all the employer knows you slacked off in University and took a bunch of courses that have no relation to your job. By stating in your resume that “Yeah I know my way around Microsoft office” Or 'Yeah I know what a variable is and how to measure Data and clean it up," that makes you so much more competitive than most of the applicants for the job.

But beyond course work is Internships and Undergraduate Thesis’s which I think is the most important thing that you can do at University. That’s how I got my job.

Good luck everyone