Law, Criminology and Criminal Justice

Law, criminology, and criminal justice together provide one of the most comprehensive and interconnected frameworks for understanding how societies define, prevent, and respond to crime. Law provides the formal structures of rules, rights, and procedures through which crime is defined and prosecuted, examining how legislation, case law, and constitutional frameworks operate in practice. Criminology approaches crime as a social and political phenomenon, asking why crime occurs, how it is distributed across populations, and how criminal justice institutions, including police, courts, prisons, and probation, respond to it.

Criminal justice, as a field, examines those institutions directly, evaluating their effectiveness, fairness, and impact on both victims and offenders. The combination produces graduates who can understand crime and punishment from multiple perspectives simultaneously.

At Teesside University, this three-year full-time degree develops knowledge and analytical skills across all three disciplines. You will study the foundations of English law, including public law, the human rights framework established by the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights, and the core substantive areas of criminal and civil law. The criminological component addresses the major theoretical explanations for crime and deviance and the empirical evidence about who commits crime, who is victimised, and how criminal justice systems respond.

Criminal justice analysis examines the operation and effectiveness of policing, prosecution, courts, sentencing, and rehabilitation, drawing on law, sociology, and public policy to evaluate how the system functions and what reforms might improve it.

Graduates enter a wide range of careers in the criminal justice system and beyond. Common destinations include roles in probation, the prison service, youth justice, police services, victim support, legal services, social work, policy analysis, the civil service, and advocacy organisations. The analytical and research skills developed by the degree are also valued across a range of professional fields.

Many graduates continue to postgraduate study in criminology, law, criminal justice, social policy, or social work, building specialist expertise for research, policy, or advanced professional roles.