Law and Criminology

Law and criminology is a combination that asks you to understand the legal frameworks that govern society alongside the social, psychological, and structural forces that produce crime and shape responses to it. Law trains you in the interpretation of rules and statutes, the analysis of cases and precedents, and the construction of careful legal argument. Criminology examines crime as a social phenomenon, asking why people offend, how societies define and respond to criminal behaviour, and whether the institutions of criminal justice, including police, courts, and prisons, achieve what they claim to.

Together, the two subjects give you a genuinely critical perspective on law as both a body of rules and a set of social practices.

At the University of Kent, which has a long tradition of socially engaged and theoretically rigorous legal education, you will develop your analytical and critical skills by studying law through both a societal and a legal lens. You will cover the foundations of English law across the areas required for a qualifying law degree while also engaging deeply with criminological theory, criminal justice policy, victimology, and the sociology of crime and deviance. The three-year full-time programme equips you to think about law and crime in ways that go beyond technical doctrine to ask harder questions about justice, power, and social order.

Graduates from law and criminology programmes can proceed to the vocational stages required to qualify as a solicitor or barrister in England and Wales. Many also move into the criminal justice sector directly, working in the probation service, youth justice, the prison service, legal advice organisations, and criminal law practice. Research, policy, journalism, social work, and the voluntary sector are other common paths.

Some graduates continue to postgraduate study in criminology, social policy, criminal law, or human rights.