Law with Criminal Justice

Law with criminal justice is a degree that combines a qualifying legal education with dedicated study of the criminal justice system, examining both the rules that govern criminal liability and the institutions, processes, and policies through which those rules are enforced, adjudicated, and administered. Law gives you the technical skills to read and reason with legal texts, to understand the principles of criminal liability, procedure, and evidence, and to navigate the wider legal system. Criminal justice adds a critical and empirical dimension, examining policing, prosecution, courts, sentencing, and the prison system as social institutions with histories, ideologies, and effects that legal analysis alone cannot fully capture.

At the University of Chester, this three-year full-time programme provides a qualifying law degree for England and Wales alongside specialist study in criminal justice. Chester has good connections with local criminal justice agencies, legal practitioners, and the courts, which enriches both the theoretical and applied dimensions of the degree. You will study the core areas of English law, including contract, tort, criminal law, constitutional and public law, equity and trusts, and land law, alongside the sociology and politics of criminal justice, criminological theory, victimology, and the management and reform of criminal justice institutions.

The combination is particularly suited to those who want to work in criminal law, the criminal courts, the Crown Prosecution Service, criminal defence practice, or in the wider criminal justice sector including the probation and prison services, victim support, and social policy.

Graduates of law with criminal justice pursue careers as solicitors and barristers specialising in criminal work, in the Crown Prosecution Service, in criminal justice agencies, in social research and policy, and in the many voluntary and statutory organisations that work with offenders, victims, and communities affected by crime.