Law with Criminology

Law with Criminology combines two disciplines that together provide one of the most complete available frameworks for understanding how societies attempt to manage harm, maintain order, and deliver justice. Law gives you a rigorous understanding of the rules that govern behaviour, the institutions that create and enforce them, and the processes through which disputes are resolved and rights are protected. Criminology asks the harder questions: why does crime happen, who is most affected by it, are the institutions of criminal justice effective and fair, and what should we be trying to achieve through punishment and prevention?

At the University of Northampton, this part-time programme gives you the flexibility to study both disciplines around other commitments, and it includes a sandwich placement year and work placements, grounding the academic content in real professional experience. You will undertake a comprehensive study of the law, examining it in its social, economic, and political context, alongside criminological questions about crime, social order, and social control. Criminology engages you with questions such as what counts as crime, how laws are enforced, why crime concentrates in particular places and communities, and how evidence should be evaluated and used.

The two subjects together give you both the technical legal knowledge and the critical analytical perspective to engage seriously with how justice is sought and delivered in practice.

Graduates go on to careers in the legal profession (where further professional training will be needed for qualification as a solicitor or barrister), policing, probation, social work, criminal justice administration, policy research, and the charitable sector. The combination is particularly well suited to careers in criminal law practice, criminal justice reform, and legal policy. Postgraduate study in law, criminology, social work, or public policy is a natural route for those who wish to specialise further.