Criminology BSc (Hons)

We have an employability guarantee. We offer opportunities for all undergraduate students in Year 1 to build employability skills which leads to Year 2 opportunities to apply for placements in our ‘Working In’ Module.

Link with the LSBU Justice, Conflict, Activism and Communities Research Group, which organises a series of research seminars and public events throughout the year where you can meet with researchers, practitioners and campaigners.

We have strong professional links. Our Criminology courses open pathways to careers in a variety of settings including probation, policing, the prison service, NGOs, local authorities, the voluntary sector, youth offending teams, teaching, social work and administration.

Overview
Course Content
Teaching and Assessment
Careers
Entry Requirements
Apply
Fees

Overview

Brand new for September 2026 and beyond! We've revamped this programme from Sept 2026 entry onwards with brand new modules and more of a focus on work-based learning. The changes include more content on London as a laboratory for change, the media and its effect on crime and culture, and how you can put your work into practice. Check out the course content tab for more detail.

What factors can explain changes in crime rates? How is climate change linked to the crimes of the powerful? Are prisons the appropriate response to criminal acts? Are we all treated equally before the law?

These are some of the issues you will explore in this course, by looking at the complex interactions between the state, the offender, the victim and society. You will think critically about how laws are made and how social structures shape both crime and responses to crime.

Course Content

What will I learn?

This course provides you with valuable knowledge and the ability to think critically about a range of topics within criminology. You will also gain transferable skills, which will provide you with a solid background to starting your career in different fields. Topics you will study include criminal justice, prisons, policing, punishment, youth crime and hate crime.

Semester 1

Build a keen understanding of key criminological concepts, questions, and debates, while becoming an independent learner in your own right. You will explore what crime is and how criminologists study it. Alongside subject content, you will build essential academic skills such as referencing, academic integrity, and locating academic sources. The module encourages curiosity, critical thinking, and engagement with contemporary social issues, laying a strong foundation for further criminological study.

Explore key questions about crime, harm, and justice, while thinking critically about what counts as crime and who is labelled a criminal. You will examine how crime is constructed, represented, measured, and addressed in society, and consider topics such as moral panics, surveillance, urban inequalities and lived experiences of the crime and social control. The module also moves beyond traditional criminology to look at wider forms of social harm, including environmental damage and structural inequalities. By the end, you will understand how power and social structures shape definitions of crime, whose harms matter, and how societies choose to respond.

This module provides an overview of the development of youth crime as a specific area of criminological inquiry and a distinct jurisdiction within the criminal justice system. Consider the development of ‘delinquency’ as a specific field of intervention and investigation. It gives particular attention to the evolution of youth justice policies and examines current literature in relation to the strengths and limitations of the contemporary youth justice system.

Semester 2

Explores the intersection of law, justice, society and modern technology, focusing on how digital advancements shape crime, crime control, legal frameworks, and societal responses. You will examine legal, societal and ethical issues, study contemporary case examples, and understand how technology impacts crime prevention, investigation, and the administration of justice. The module aims to equip you with critical insights into the evolving relationship between law, society and technology.

Examine London as a dynamic case study and explore how crime, social exclusion, and power shape urban life. Through historical and contemporary examples, you will look at themes such as poverty and crime, spatial stigma, race and policing, gender and sexuality, security and urban design, and cultural representations of “criminal London”. Uncover how social difference and criminalisation interact to produce the city’s spaces and identities. By connecting criminological debates to the politics of urban space, this module equips you to critically analyse inequality, power, and control in one of the world’s most complex cities.

This module will introduce you to key criminological concepts, questions, and debates, while supporting you development as an independent learner. Explore what crime is and how criminologists study it, and think critically and curiously about contemporary social issues, laying a strong foundation for further study. As well as this you will build essential academic skills such as referencing, academic integrity, and locating academic sources.

Semester 1

Compulsory

Explore the relationship between crime and media in the context of radical social and cultural shifts over the recent decades. Drawing on audience studies and cultural criminology, the module presents a compelling account of the significance of the media to understanding contemporary crime trends. You will also examine emerging cultural and technological trends as they relate to the question of crime and justice.

Semester 2

This module provides an opportunity for you to work in settings related to your studies and, more generally, gain meaningful workplace experience (60 hours) to apply learning as part of the degree. It will also reinforce your studies through the application and integration of relevant workplace experience into the academic context. Voluntary and community sector organisations, charities and most political organisations are particularly suitable for work experience although much can also be learned from internal and external work experience opportunities available for students. The latter will provide you with sector specific experience or an opportunity to apply transferable skills in practice.

Learn to interrogate the power and politics of policing through a critical lens, exposing historical, social, and contemporary struggles shaping law enforcement today. While rooted in the UK, you will draw on global comparisons to uncover how systems of control operate. You will learn to challenge orthodox narratives of the Metropolitan Police from the 1829 Act through colonial entanglements to modern controversies, and examine racialised policing, community surveillance, and securitisation of minority groups, exploring whether reform or abolitionism is required. Dissecting police culture, legitimacy, and procedural justice to understand the global crisis of policing, along the way.

Explore contemporary debates about imprisonment, including global trends and mass incarceration. Look at key issues in the prison system, with a focus on Britain, such as living conditions, overcrowding, understaffing and prisoners’ rights. It provides students with a critical understanding of the differential experiences of incarceration according to gender, race, disability, age, nationality and the impact of imprisonment on individual prisoners, their families, communities and society. It engages with wider debates on the use of detention in relation to immigration policies and to suppress dissent. It also engages with theories and debates about prison abolitionism.

Semester 1

Compulsory

Over two semesters, this module consists of the research for and completion of a final project in Criminology. You will choose a subject or policy area in which you wish to specialise. This module allows you to consolidate and apply the skills and knowledge developed throughout their studies to undertake and complete the final project. The module provides structured in-class teaching to prepare students to undertake their project independently, under the supervision of a member of staff. Additionally, each student has the support of a supervisor who guides them from choice of topic to final submission during supervision sessions.

Explore contemporary, historical and critical theoretical discussions about gendered experiences of crime and the criminal justice system. It equips students with key concepts and theories pertaining to gender norms, including the understanding of ‘femininities and masculinities’ in the study of criminology and how they shape societal approaches to gender-based violence and harms. The module also engages with academic debates that move beyond binary discussions of gendered experiences.

Learn to challenge traditional criminology by shifting the focus from Western perspectives to different global, Indigenous voices within criminology of the south. It adopts a social harms approach, questioning narrow legal definitions of crime and highlighting how power operates beyond the state. You will explore issues such as state violence in borders and the impact of farming, tourism, and the food industry on Indigenous communities. By decentring the Western gaze, the module examines how structures of power reproduce colonial dynamics and generate crime, harm, inequality and resistance across diverse communities and geographies.

Semester 2

Explore and discuss crimes and harms committed by states, corporations and international organisations, including violations of human rights, colonialism, environmental harms and ecocide. It explores the different forms of violence caused by both legal and illegal acts and omissions by powerful actors and how they affect people, communities, workers, consumers, non-human animals and the environment. It examines the challenges involved in conceptualizing, regulating and responding to state and corporate crimes. The critical engagement with concepts such as power, globalization and neoliberalism provides a framework within which you can explore contemporary debates and case studies.

Look at criminological theory and approaches which attempt to meet the emerging challenges faced by society. The blurring of fact and fiction serves both as a context to which theory is applied as well as a tool for exploring how the future of crime, justice, and society may play out. As technology forces us to confront and reconsider the concept of humanity, this module seeks to examine how criminology may help us to confront these issues.

* Modules are subject to review and change throughout the year.

Teaching and Assessment

How will I learn?

Study hours

Year 1 class contact time is typically 9 hours per week plus individual tutorial and independent study.

Brief assessment outline

All modules are assessed by a combination of coursework, essays, exams, presentations, reports, case-studies, reviews and final year dissertation.

Research active academics

You will be taught by research-active academics whose work is internationally recognised and informs the course curriculum. You'll be encouraged to attend and participate in the research seminars and events organized by the Crime and Justice Research Group, that will strengthen your learning experience as well as your network.

Criminology conference and events at LSBU

At LSBU,Criminology staff are actively engaged in research and organize research events, conferences and seminars at LSBU and other universities throughout the year. The Crime and Justice Research Group organizes a monthly research seminar and at least two larger events open to the public. Over the past two years we have welcomed Prof. Alex Vitale from New York as a visiting professor, held a public event with Prof. Alex Vitale and Gary Younge, as well as two round table events focusing on Youth and (In)justice and more recently on Policing dissent.

Careers

What's in it for me?

Employability Service

At LSBU, we want to set you up for a successful career. During your studies – and for two years after you graduate – you’ll have access to our Employability Service, which includes:

Our Student Enterprise team can also help you start your own business and develop valuable entrepreneurial skills.

Career opportunities

Our students volunteer and find jobs in a range of setting, including the police service, the prison service, legal advice, victim support, domestic violence and child abuse agencies and charities, youth offending and youth mentoring schemes.

A social science degree also has the real advantage of opening up careers in a number of professions such as teaching, social work, administration and higher level education. Other graduates have forged exciting careers in research, public relations, advertising, retail, management and media-related work.

Career roles

One popular role is as a probation officer working with offenders before, during and after they are sentenced. Possessing a great deal of patience, strong oral communication skills and a non-judgemental attitude, working in probation can be very rewarding work. A qualified probation officer can earn between £28,000-£35,000. (National Careers Service)

The police service also offers a wide variety of long-term opportunities providing a two-year probationary period is completed. Salaries after 5 years can be up to £30,000. (BBC News)

There are a number of career opportunities within the criminal justice system or agencies and charities working with victims of crime, ex-offenders, and witnesses.

Career progression

The academic strength of our programmes has allowed many graduates to continue onto postgraduate degrees and academic research.

Criminology staff have links with practitioners working in the criminal justice system and utilise the expertise of these contacts to organise guest speakers so students are able to hear from industry experts.

For example: Harry Potter, a criminal defence barrister, and a former fellow of Selwyn College Cambridge, says his famous name has been a distinct advantage. He has represented clients in all areas of crime, including court-martials. He is a published author of several books on legal and Scottish history and his latest book on the history of prisons will shortly be published. He has worked for the BBC presenting a TV series on our legal system and a documentary on capital punishment. He is also a qualified Church of England priest and for eight years was a prison chaplain attending many lifer review hearings. He believes that too many people are jailed and for too long. He regularly lectures at LSBU on the death penalty, criminal justice and prisons.

Optional Work Placement

Students will complete a work-based learning module as part of their second year where they will complete an optional work placement or take part in other forms of work-based learning. In the past, our students have volunteered with charities and criminal justice agencies, with local authorities, on programmes ranging from rehabilitation of offenders to victim support and campaigner groups. Through these, students contribute to real world situations linked to their subject of interest. In many cases, students maintain a relationship with the organisation they volunteer for. Placements ground a student's experience, provide confidence and bolster a CV immeasurably.

Our students have taken up work placements at:

LSBU CareerSmart is your ultimate gateway to career success. Our innovative programme is designed to ensure you graduate with more than just a degree, providing the support you need to stand out in a competitive job market. We've got all the tools you need, including:

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We understand that you’re in the driver’s seat of your career, which is why we’re committed to matching your passion and energy every step of the way.

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Entry Level Requirements

112 UCAS points

Or equivalent level 3 qualifications.

If you do not meet the entry criteria above we also review any previous skills, knowledge or experience you have gained outside of your education and are happy to talk through any extenuating circumstances you feel relevant.

Visit UCAS for guidance on the tariff.

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Apply

Course delivery modes and application methods

Mode	Duration	Start date	Application code	Application method
Full-time	3 years	September	M930	UCAS

International applicants can apply directly to LSBU and should consult our international how to apply guide for further information on the application process and key dates.

See our admissions policy (PDF File 1,043 KB) and complaints policy (PDF File 516 KB).

How to apply

Read more about how to apply for undergraduate courses.

International students

International applicants can apply directly to LSBU and should consult our international how to apply guide for further information on the application process and key dates.

Accommodation

Read more about applying for accommodation at LSBU.

Prepare to start

Applicant events

After you’ve received your offer we’ll send you emails about events we run to help you prepare for your course. You’ll also be invited to our Applicant Taster Day so keep your eyes peeled!

Enrolment

Before you start your course, we’ll send you information on what you’ll need to do before you arrive and during your first few days on campus. You can read about the process on our enrolment pages.

Fees

United Kingdom

£9790

Tuition fees for home students

International

£17400

Tuition fees for international students

Tuition fees are subject to annual inflationary increases. Find out more about tuition fees for Undergraduate or Postgraduate courses.

full-time

Year 1

Full-time Year 1 - All Available Courses

BSc (Hons) Criminology [Criminology] (FT) - Year 1 FT Southwark SEPT Criminology

The fee shown is for entry 2026/27
UK fee: £9790	International fee: £17400
AOS/LSBU code: 5781	Session code: 1FS00

Total course fee for this location/stream:

* The full amount is subject to fee increases, the total shown below is based on current fees.

UK: £29370

International: £52200

For more information, including how and when to pay, see our fees and funding section for undergraduate students.

Please check your fee status and whether you are considered a Home, EU or International student for fee-paying purposes and for our regulatory returns, by reading the UKCISA regulations.

See our Tuition Fees Regulations (PDF File 630 KB) and Refund Policy (PDF File 775 KB).

Possible fee changes

The University reserves the right to increase its fees in line with changes to legislation, regulation and any government guidance or decisions.

The fees for international students are reviewed annually and the University reserves the right to increase the tuition fees to reflect increased costs of delivery and to maintain an a high-quality student experience. This increase would be no more than Consumer Prices Index (CPI) increases plus 5%.

Scholarships

We offer several types of fee reduction through our scholarships and bursaries. Find the full list and other useful information on our scholarships page.

Are you an international student looking to kickstart your global career at LSBU? If so, our new LSBU Future Global Graduate Awards could help you benefit from the high-quality, career focused education that LSBU offers. Find out more about our Global Graduate Awards.