Criminology aims to help students understand the world of crime from a multitude of perspectives. Students will be introduced to the reasons people commit crime and how we, as a society, can go about reducing crime. The academic principals underpinning this come from Psychology and Sociology and there are many overlapping elements with these courses. We aim to help students better understand the how and why of crime from committing, to reducing to punishing.

The course follows the WJEC Diploma specification and we study changing awareness of crime, criminological theories, crime scene to court room and crime and punishment as our four units. It follows a methodical pace of two units in the first year and two units in the second year, one assessed by controlled assessment internally and one assessed externally by exams. These units are all compulsory but we feel we have a good balance of expertise within the department to feed into these as the course follows many Psychological and Sociological theories as well as covering some fundamentals of the English legal system.

The course is challenging to students by design, it is contemporary and by the nature of assessment flexible and up to date. The controlled assessment has the ability to be really up to date with contemporary crimes and students can enjoy it for its challenge and relevance. Throughout students are encouraged to make links to other areas of curriculum, most obviously Sociology and Psychology but will also be able to make links to other humanities. Criminology is a good foundation for students moving on to study social science or humanities-based subjects at University. It would also be beneficial for students moving on to public services such as Police.