1. Criminology in the Professions
Frequently asked questions and student comments:
The job I want to do in future is not covered by the
practitioner lectures on the module.
Answer: Clearly it would be impossible to cover every career
that every single student is interested in on this module.
However the university careers service is constantly inviting
practitioners onto campus, so it is important that you join the
careers/opportunities community on Blackboard which will
alert you to these. Having said this, all organisations who
recruit graduates look for some of the same types of
competences and skills from their employees, so you can
learn a lot from any of the practitioners invited in to speak to
you, even if you are not interested in working in their area.
Why can’t we do work placements instead of the seminars?
Answer: Work placements have a number of problems. It is
particularly difficult to organise large numbers of placements
that give equality of opportunity to everyone and are of equal
value, which is significant when you are being assessed on
the work for your degree. Instead we prefer to give all
students as similar an experience as possible by keeping the
module teaching and learning within the university
curriculum. There are considerable opportunities however to
undertake work experience, voluntary placements and join
the employer mentoring scheme, external to the curriculum,
so look out for emails and announcements on Blackboard for
these and make sure you join the careers/opportunities
community so that you get regular updates.
What has this module to do with criminology?
Answer: All academic university degrees are expected to
equip graduates with transferable skills within the context of
the subject matter of the course. This module provides a link
between the academic study of criminology and appropriate
graduate skills. You are therefore required to explore

2. Criminology in the Professions
professional opportunities, recruitment and selection
methods of organisations related to criminological study and
come to an understanding about how theoretical, political
and practical reflection is useful in your personal
professional development. Ultimately ‘Crime’ is defined and
policed by professionals. Understanding the way that
professionals within the CJS and beyond, work, how they are
affected by organisational cultures as well as national and
local politics is fundamental in you understandingboth
criminology as a discipline, and the crime industry as a
potential workplace. The reflection required in this module
should not only help you plan for the future, but should also
help you understand more about how practitioners and
organisations affect the criminological project.
The career plan appears far too basic and pointless
Answer: If you are thinking this way, you perhaps are not
doing the work correctly. The career plan is a proper
‘informed’ piece of academic work and means that you must
use external sources to inform your discussions. Tutors
expect to see a reasonable bibliography that specifically
relates to your work; otherwise you will be in danger of
failing this assignment. It is acceptable that many of the
sources are likely to be from the internet, but you do need to
make sure that you believe them to be valid. We also expect
to see reference to theoretical underpinnings with the best
plans reflecting on things like career anchors, DOT’S
analysis, managerialism, organisational culture, as well as
the political context of any profession. These things are all
very relevant, because all careers, courses, training and
other potential plans are directly affected by the socio-
economic and political context of the country. Knowing this
means that you can be realistic about how to achieve what
you want, and what you are going to have to do to realise
your ambitions.

3. Criminology in the Professions
Career planning should not be marked as not all students are
interested in practitioner roles
If you haven’t got a clue what to do, don’t want to go into a
‘criminological job’, want to travel, volunteer or even start
your own business, it is just as important to plan your future.
So called ‘gap years’ are best when they have been planned
effectively and there are lots of organisations offering help
with this type of experience, but you need to be careful about
which are genuine and offer you good (safe) placements,
advice and support etc. Not knowing what to do is very
common, in fact around a quarter of last years students,
didn’t know what they wanted to do. It helps however if you
know where you can get information or help from, or what
sort of things are actually out there. Even coming to some
conclusions about what you don’t want to do is a valuable
lesson learnt! Post graduate study is a good option for some
people, but you will need to identify both what courses you
might be interested in and how you might finance this. Some
courses expect you to have particular competences or
grades, and most will have deadlines for applications. Even if
you just want to go and do ‘any job’ to get some money
together whilst you think about the future, planning this can
make the difference between obtaining work or not given the
current political circumstances. You will often find that the
‘any job’ type of job has management potential for those who
want it, but it’s about knowing what is available on any
particular organisation. Whilst a small number of students
don’t think that doing a career plan should be part of the
course or marked, our research suggests that once they get
into it, the vast majority of students value the chance to have
time within the curriculum to reflect on their future.
10% for participation attendance and the presentations is not
enough.
Answer: Whilst 10% seems a small proportion of the marks,
because you can score 100% for this section it can make a
significant difference to your marks. A large number of
students last year gained a full class on their written work
specifically due to scoring 100% on their participation mark.

4. Criminology in the Professions
This resulted in adding an extra 10 marks to the grade that
they gained for the written work; therefore the attendance
mark is very valuable.
I do not see the point in leading seminars as I have no
interest in teaching, and staff are paid to teach us.
Answer: When you attend university, it is expected that you
will not only gain subject knowledge, but that you will also
gain experiences and skills that are transferable to life
beyond university. The skills involved in leading seminars
have application beyond teaching to other graduate types of
jobs that involve anything from presentation skills to running
a successful meeting. The teaching methods at university are
very different to those in school. If staff taught you
everything that you needed to know, you would not develop
the ability to learn for yourself which is a fundamental
graduate skill. Criminology is an academic degree which
means that we do not teach you the skills to do a specific job.
The whole degree course is about providing you with
opportunities to develop and enhance your knowledge about
the discipline but also to encourage you to develop
transferable skills that are valued by employers. The
emphasis is on you personally developing the intellectual
tools which you can transfer to other situations, rather than
staff teaching these to you. Employers expect graduates to
have a number of transferable skills including good
presentation skills, be self starters, have the ability to
research and critically solve problems as well as the ability
to put together analytical and informed arguments. This and
other modules on your course use the disciplinary
knowledge within criminology to help you develop skills,
which will be valuable to your future whatever you decide to
do.
So… your career plan should reflect what you really want to
do after university looking at…
'Where am I now' could include a reflection on your current
skills base, including analysing the skills and competences
that you are gaining from your degree, other education
experiences of note as well as work experience,

5. Criminology in the Professions
volunteering, and other skills/interests etc. Useful sources
could be module and degree descriptors from the university
sites, internet sites or other discourses for any organisation
that you have worked or volunteered for; the University of
Lincoln careers site; sports and recreation sites etc.
The 'where do I want to be' could look at jobs, post grad
education, volunteering, travelling, starting a business,
training, or even, where 'you' might get inspiration or
information about what might be available if you haven’t a
clue. Use could be made of reflective techniques such as
‘career anchors’ or a DOTS analysis which might help you
come to some conclusions about what you are interested in
doing. You should make a career planning interview with our
careers professionals and get them to help you do this, and
you might want to look at both long and short term plans. The
main issue here is to look at what there is out there, think
about what might appeal to you and what these opportunities
require in terms of competences. Useful sources would
include websites from specific organisations, professions
and educational institutes; academic sources on specific
organisations, or services eg Police, Prisons, education,
public sector; academic sources on theoretical, socio-
economic and political issues such as organisational
cultures, managerialism, performance indicators;
conservativism, neo-liberalism, government policy etc;
career planning tools such as ‘career anchors’ etc.
The 'How do I get there' is about matching the skills that you
have identified to the plans that you are developing. In this
section you will be expected to both identify what
competences and experiences you have that the
organisations you are interested in require, and if you don't
have the required skills and competences, how are going to
develop these. Useful sources again would be a mix of those
stated in the first two sections.