New for 2022: MSc International Criminology and Criminal Justice

New for 2022: MSc International Criminology and Criminal Justice

The School of Social Sciences has launched its new master’s degree in Criminology, exploring the impact that globalisation and digitalisation are having on crime and crime control.

This new programme takes an international approach, exploring the increasingly cross-border nature of crime, and the challenges that are facing criminal justice and law enforcement agencies around the world.

We spoke to Programme Director, Dr Luca Giommoni, about what students can expect from the new programme.

Watch the programme video.

Why was the MSc International Criminology and Criminal Justice created?

When we started to develop this programme, there was no MSc programme in the UK taking a broad view of crime in international contexts. We believe it is no longer possible to confine the study of crime to a national level. Countries and communities around the world are more connected than ever and criminals are adapting to this new environment and exploiting our increased dependency on digital technologies.

Our response to crime now needs to consider this internationality, and so we created the MSc International Criminology and Criminal Justice.

What topics will the programme cover?

In this programme we will question how we define ‘crime’, at a local, national and global level, as well as the international and national responses to these types of crimes. We will explore topics such as hate speech on social media and its relationship with offline hate crime or how illicit drugs are trafficked across countries. For instance, we will examine whether events, like the terrorist attacks, can cause an increase in hate perpetration.

Perhaps more importantly, we will cover how to respond to these crimes at a local, national, and global level. For instance, what can we do to reduce domestic victimization or child sexual abuse?  We will do this by looking at crime control, crime prevention and crime reduction from a variety of international and national institutions.

Why did you choose to include a work placement in the programme?

We wanted to make sure that education and work were as close as possible.  The work placement offers the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills acquired and developed during the programme in a work environment. We have a variety of different placement opportunities including the prison service, the probation service, Welsh government, and many others including the many research centres we have here at the University.

In their placement, students may be supporting recently released prisoners in re-integrating into society or working to prepare analytics and evidence to support policy decisions in crime-related areas.

What skills will students gain on this programme?

They will learn the practical skills needed to assess the nature, scale and impact of crimes, using crime data, statistics but also interviews and other qualitative methods.

This includes traditional forms of data such as police recorded offences but also new and emerging data sources such as social media data and big data analytics. For instance, they will learn how to use social media to estimate offline crime patterns, using insights from Cardiff University’s HateLab, a global hub for data and insight into hate speech and crime

Applications are open for the MSc International Criminology and Criminal Justice for September 2022.