DCrimJ Professional Doctorate in Criminal Justice

Our Professional Doctorate in Criminal Justice (DCrimJ) is a structured 4-year program. The first two years are focused on workshop-based teaching in Portsmouth, while the latter two years are focused on supervised research, leading to a thesis.

Established in 2007, this course offers a framework for criminal justice professionals to reflect on and contribute to practice in their area of work. And unlike the more traditional Ph.D. route – which aims to develop professional researchers – the Professional Doctorate in Criminal Justice develop researching professionals.

Students are drawn from a variety of backgrounds in criminal justice – including policing, counter fraud, the private security industry, the voluntary sector, youth justice, prisons, probation, the legal profession, and forensic mental health.

The aim of the course is to develop criminal justice professionals whose work informs and is informed by original research in the field. Previous graduates have followed research projects into profession-related subjects such as:

• Reform and the Garda in the Republic of Ireland
• The National Intelligence Model and reduced risk in the public sector
• Gender within specialist police departments