This course explores the application of psychological principles to diverse aspects of the analysis, investigation and legal processing of crime.

This exciting course currently offers intensive training on advanced statistical methods, which may open doors into many jobs beyond crime and investigations.

The course offers you the opportunity to engage with Centres within the Institute for Research in Citizenship and Applied Human Sciences (IRCAHS). During your studies you will hear from visiting speakers including experts from around the world and police officers will talk about real life cases.

The course is currently accredited by the British Psychological Society and recognised as the first step towards status as a Chartered Forensic Psychologist in the UK for students who have Graduate Basis for Chartership.

Investigative psychology is the systematic science that developed out of early ‘offender profiling’ contributions by psychologists and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to police investigations and court cases. In recent years this sub-discipline has become an increasingly dominant area of forensic psychology.

The course covers the full range of contributions that professional psychologists can make including the legal and investigative process; evaluating the validity of suspect or witness accounts; assessing the decision-making processes of detectives or jurors; to developing profiling inferences about the likely characteristics of an offender and predicting their likely home location.

Much of this expertise is predicated upon the detailed understanding of criminal action patterns, so intensive examinations of the variations in criminal behavioural style are a central feature of this course.

This course aims to provide in-depth expertise in all aspects of Investigative Psychology as developed by the originator of the discipline Professor David Canter. It has a strong research emphasis, helping to equip you with the expertise to conduct your own crime research projects in diverse professional contexts.

After completing the course our graduates have gone on to work in diverse legal and forensic contexts, often progressing rapidly to senior levels as crime and intelligence analysts, behavioural investigative advisors, forensic lecturers and applied researchers. They also work in prisons or with clinical forensic populations or within commercial organisations and government agencies such as specialist crime units, the National Policing Improvements Agency or the Home Office.