Course summary

Gain a solid grounding in police criminal investigations while also developing broad knowledge and skills that will set you up for a wide range of careers in criminal justice and beyond or further studies. Criminal investigation is a central part of police activity, and when seeing the news every day, we can see how it influences the public perception of the police and their accountability and legitimacy. The increase in crime, and the way crime is committed today, provides very different challenges to those facing detectives of the past. On this course you will adopt a critical approach to criminal investigations, exploring investigative history, police effectiveness in volume, serious and complex, and major crime investigations, historic and current sexual and domestic abuse investigations. You will also seek to understand the current context within which detectives work, including a national shortage of detectives, government austerity measures and the rise in technology and complex criminality. Specialist facilities We have invested significantly in a Hydra suite that will allow our students to simulate crime scenarios under ‘close-to-real’ conditions You will have the opportunity to use the Hydra facility during some modules (e.g. decision making) to allow you to directly experience highly realistic incidents, situations and scenarios as part of your integrated learning. You will also be able to gain some applied knowledge of criminal justice processes through our ‘courtroom’ which is a lecture theatre which simulates a courtroom and which used to be a courtroom in the past. Location This course is run at our Canterbury Campus in Kent. Canterbury is just 50 miles south-east of London and less than an hour by high-speed train from St Pancras. Located on a UNESCO World Heritage Site the campus offers state-of-the-art buildings, right in the centre of a vibrant and world-famous cathedral city. You’ll benefit from a campus with excellent learning and teaching resources, music venues, a superb sports centre, a well-stocked bookshop and plenty of coffee bars and places to eat. A short walk away is Augustine House our award-winning library and home to a vast range of learning resources and student support teams.