Criminal Justice Education

A degree in Criminal Justice can either qualify you or enhance qualifications you already possess for many different career paths within the area of criminal justice in the public and private sectors. People tend to think of police officers when they hear the term “criminal justice” but the reality is there are dozens of careers within the criminal justice system.

A degree in criminal justice will enable you to combine one area of expertise or interest with another. For example, a lawyer may pursue a criminal justice degree after he becomes a lawyer or a graduate with a degree in criminal justice may go on to pursue law school.

There are some career paths where all you will need is a degree in criminal justice and there are others where you will need both that degree and other education or training. Some careers in criminal justice involve sitting at a desk and analyzing data while some involve carrying a weapon and protecting the public. Some involve working with blood and others involve avoiding bloodshed.

Some criminal justice careers involve taking pictures and others involve putting pictures together. No doubt, it is a fascinating field that many have made a life-long career out of. As technology advances our society new divisions of criminal justice have had to be devised to fight cyber crime involving both sexual crimes and fraud investigations.

For anyone interested in an education in criminal justice that may just be the beginning. You still have many choices to make as to what your life’s career path will be.

The criminal justice system is a complicated system that sometimes doesn’t seem to make sense. Many of the people that get involved in working within this system do so because they hope to improve the system. Most want to make a difference, to make society safer for others and their contributions come in many different forms. Yet, before an individual can begin to incite change in any criminal justice field they will need to acquire a criminal justice education.

A career in law enforcement can take many forms. A police officer is just one of those careers that requires a Criminal Justice Education. There are also detectives that work to solve crimes, crime scene analysts, photographers, lab technicians, police dispatchers, jailers, administration workers and others, all of which require a criminal justice education.

There are those who dust for the fingerprints and process the crime scene and there are those that analyze data after it has all been collected.

Within Law Enforcement there are many different divisions that an education in criminal justice would be more than useful to have. Whether you want to work in Vice, Narcotics, Sexual Crimes, Robbery, Homicide or work to find missing children, you will find that a criminal justice education is the doorway to such fields.

Law enforcement is one of the most dangerous of all the careers in the criminal justice field. Brave men and women lay down their lives for the rest of us every day. From a seemingly simple traffic stop to hostage negotiation, the men and women who go to the street for us never know what they might get caught up in.

It takes special people to care enough about others to put their own lives in danger every day. A criminal justice education isn’t enough to be successful in a career in Law Enforcement. Although it can certainly help advance your career, the educational requirements for this line of work is only the beginning. Just as important and something you can’t get out of a book is the character needed for the daily challenges. When you have a career in Law Enforcement, you don’t know if you’re going to make it home at the end of any given day or if you’re going to walk into a deadly situation the way so many of them did on September 11, 2001.

Some people get an education in criminal justice specifically because they want to enter the Department of Corrections in their career endeavors. Certainly all the education you can get in this field will help you in this career and the more education you can get the higher up the ladder you can move.

You might want to pursue the career of warden at a correctional facility or a guard or a number of other positions. These are often state jobs and carry generous benefits and a somewhat middle-of-the-road salary; nevertheless, you will need to get a solid criminal justice education in order for such jobs to be open to you.

There are many departments relating to the Department of Corrections at different levels of government. There is the parole department which supervisors convicted criminals who have been released on parole. Then there is probation and the juvenile justice system which encompasses many departments within that system.

There are prison guards and jailers and teachers and trainers all within the Corrections Department. There are bounty hunters that track down fugitives and escapees too. There are Canine Corrections Officers who train and work with canine units to search for drugs, contraband and escaped prisoners.

There are department heads and case managers and administrative personnel all within the Department of Corrections. Just working anywhere inside of a prison can be dangerous and depressing yet it is a crucial part of the criminal justice system and this department needs dedicated, brave people who will serve the department well. No matter what arena of criminal justice you may be interested in, establishing a solid criminal justice education is the first step in achieving your dreams.

Forensics is a fascinating part of the criminal justice system. Science and technology make it possible for us to know things about crimes and crime victims that no one would ever have believed we could know a hundred years ago. Forensics isn’t just about autopsies although that may be where you’ve heard the term. Even so, what the medical examiner can find out by examining the body after death goes a long way in the criminal justice system today.

You don’t have to perform autopsies to have a part in forensics as it pertains to criminal justice. There are many different kinds of forensics, which broadly speaking, means using science and technology to investigate and establish the facts belonging to a criminal or civil proceeding.

Thus, forensic accounting as it applies to the criminal justice system would be investigating accounting practices and evidence to discover the facts relating to perhaps a case of embezzlement or suppose a company has discovered thousands of dollars missing but has no idea where it went or who might have taken it. A forensic accountant would be able to trace the transactions that led up to the disappearance of the money.

Forensic anthropology has to do with examining skeletal remains to discover the facts of the crime. You may have seen TV shows where the forensic expert only had a few bones to work with, not only to discover how the person died, but who the person was. Through forensic anthropology, dedicated workers can unravel mysteries with very little evidence.

There are those that have both a psychology degree and a degree in criminal justice who work with criminal offenders and law enforcement. Psychologists who practice in the criminal justice field are able to create profiles of criminals which become necessary when law enforcement needs to find out what kind of person would commit a certain crime.

Psychologists with a degree in criminal justice might also be on staff at a correctional facility to provide therapy to the inmates along with other duties. There are psychologists and psychiatrists that evaluate persons charged with crimes to determine whether or not they are fit to stand trial. They evaluate whether prisoners knew what they were doing was wrong when they committed their crimes Some in this field become expert witnesses and some go on to treat the inmates or the mentally ill who may be institutionalized in a mental hospital instead of a prison.

An education in both psychology and criminal justice is needed in more than a few situations. People who are educated in this way may become hostage negotiators or look at similar opportunities. Even if one doesn’t specifically work in a psychiatric environment combining these two types of education can certainly give a boost to one’s career.

Even having a basic understanding of human psychology is bound to help anyone who enters the criminal justice field. This is a difficult yet fascinating field to work in and so diverse that one is not bound to one particular career within the bounds of an education in criminal justice.

Criminal justice education coupled with a law degree can prepare an attorney to be a prosecutor or defense attorney. The lawyer can set up his own private practice or work for the government in a number of ways. Many good attorneys intentionally work for agencies they know will pay them extremely low wages because they sincerely want to help people in their career.

Some people have the mistaken notion that public defenders or “legal aid” attorneys aren’t as good at what they do as their counterparts that charge $300 an hour but the fact is sometimes these attorneys are the very same ones that charge $300 an hour. Some lawyers like to do pro bono work from time to time as their way to give back to their community.

Getting a lawyer for free isn’t synonymous with “getting what you pay for.”

Some people become lawyers so they can get involved in the criminal justice system as it unfolds in the courtroom. Along with the attorneys, there are judges, bailiffs, court coordinators, and many clerks, paralegals and others behind the scenes which we never see but who do a tremendous amount of work to facilitate the processes taking place in courts of law everywhere.

Perhaps you’d like to make the laws rather than enforce them. That will most likely mean a political career rather than one within the criminal justice system but writing laws and getting them passed can be a rewarding career and one that you may be able to work into through a career in the criminal justice field.

For those who love and respect the law, there is no more rewarding career than working to facilitate the processes that make our laws work. We have some of the laws we have today as a direct result of brave men and women who fought for our freedom and our land and our right to make our own laws. The legal profession as well as the criminal justice profession is an honorable one and one that you can make a difference in.

There are dozens of opportunities to use a criminal justice education in the employ of the government. In fact, many people that earn a criminal justice degree find little difficulty when it comes to getting an entry level position in a government office. The government has attorneys not to mention the FBI and dozens of other federal positions. There’s the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and there are US Marshals.

There are jobs where you can use your criminal justice education within the government at the federal, state, city and county levels. Homeland security is just a few years old and it encompasses many different opportunities that coincide with the criminal justice system.

There are investigators at every level of government that investigate such things as fraud, safety, compliance, environmental concerns, corporate crimes and a host of other matters. Securing a job with the government in a criminal justice capacity may expose you to many different kinds of employment within the criminal justice system, and a complete criminal justice education will ensure that you are qualified to move up the ladder of opportunity when it is presented to you..

Border Patrol Agents are another branch of government working in the criminal justice system. Border Patrol Agents put their lives on the line every day to secure our borders and to keep all of us safe. They have one of the most dangerous jobs in the criminal justice field and their dedication to our safety is a true testament to their bravery.

Before the Internet, the postal service was used to perpetrators all kinds of fraud and schemes. Insurance fraud has always been among the most expensive kind of fraud criminals pursue. The mail is still used of course, but the Internet has made certain kinds of fraud easier to facilitate and has undoubtedly bred new kinds of fraud.

Some who pursue an education in criminal justice do so because they want to stop fraud in its tracks. People who investigate fraud have to have a keen eye and a sharp wit: a criminal justice education can help you develop such skills. There are many different industries that have a fraud investigation department as well as different arms of law enforcement.

The Federal Trade Commission, another branch of the government, oversees many transactions that affect consumers and warn of fraudulent practices. Unfortunately, fraud is alive and well in the United States and just about the time law enforcement and other agencies are able to take down one kind of fraud, another one begins.

Fraud investigators work for private industry as well as government entities. Insurance investigators work for insurance companies, however when fraud is uncovered they pass the information on to law enforcement for prosecution. There has been fraud related to government hand-outs whereby criminals lie and cheat to get benefits they are not due. Each of these agencies employs investigators that uncover various kinds of fraud.

When Katrina hit, FEMA handed out debit cards to help the hurricane and flood victims and there were thousands and thousands of dollars in false claims by people who weren’t even victims of the hurricane or floods. FEMA, or the Federal Emergency Management Agency put fraud investigators to work to uncover the fraudulent claims. This is just another area in the area of fraud where one can put their criminal justice education to work.

As technology advances, so do many other things, among them crime. While there seems no shortage of the “regular” kinds of crime, cyber crimes, those perpetuated over the internet, have opened up an entirely new division of law enforcement.

While some members of law enforcement walk a beat and others patrol in a car, there are still others combing the streets of Cyberspace trying to make it a safer place for all of us. Sexual predators have infiltrated Cyberspace and prowl the streets as wolves dressed in lamb’s clothing convincing young boys and girls to let them in to their earthly homes.

Then there are the scams and fraudulent cyber crimes that target millions of people each year. Hackers steal money and information over the internet and thieves steal identities. A modern education in the subject of criminal justice is sure to cover plenty of information on cyber crimes and how law enforcement works to catch these criminals.

It’s amazing how information on one’s computer can aid the criminal justice system in their investigation of crimes, and a criminal justice education can help you discover the exciting, relatively new world of computer forensics. Many people think they can delete anything on their computer but that just isn’t true. At least not to the extent that computer specialists within the criminal justice system can’t retrieve the information. There are famous cases where the perpetrators are in prison now, even on death row, due in part to information retrieved from their computers.

This brings up another career within the criminal justice system and that is the computer specialists described above. In this career path, one doesn’t actually come into contact with the criminals or suspected criminals but instead works behind the scenes as a technician of sorts who deciphers code and information found on the hard drive of a computer in order to obtain evidence to strengthen the prosecution’s case. This has worked with virtually all types of crime including sexual assault and murder.

There are many diverse career paths within the criminal justice system and an education in criminal justice will help prepare you for many different branches of the system. There are people who care passionately about justice but who don’t want to chase criminals and get shot at that make amazing contributions to the safety of our society by the work they do behind the scenes. If a career in criminal justice is what you are interested in, you have hundreds of careers to choose from.