Law with Criminology with Professional Placement Year

Law and criminology speak to some of the most fundamental questions about how societies organise themselves, respond to harm, and seek justice. Law provides the formal framework of rules, rights, and obligations that govern social life, while criminology examines crime as a social phenomenon, exploring why it occurs, how it is defined and measured, how it is responded to, and what the effects of those responses are on individuals and communities. Together the two subjects give you both technical legal knowledge and a critical social-scientific perspective on the justice system.

This four-year programme at the University of Salford includes a year abroad, giving you the opportunity to study within another legal and academic culture and to broaden your understanding of how different jurisdictions approach questions of law and criminal justice. The course also provides professional placement experience, which means you will spend time working in a professional context and developing practical skills alongside your academic study. You will study the core foundations of English law, including contract, tort, criminal law, constitutional and administrative law, and EU and human rights law, alongside modules exploring criminological theory, the sociology of deviance, policing, penology, and the experiences of victims and offenders.

Graduates from law and criminology programmes enter a wide range of careers. Some go on to legal practice through the vocational routes to qualification as a solicitor or barrister. Others work in the criminal justice system in roles including probation, the prison service, the police, and victim support.

Policy, research, journalism covering justice and legal affairs, and the charity sector are also common destinations. For those with an interest in the academic study of law or social science, postgraduate research is a further option. The combination of rigorous legal training and criminological analysis gives you a genuinely distinctive perspective on questions of justice and social order.