This course builds on your knowledge of psychology at undergraduate level. You learn how to apply this knowledge to legal and criminal issues. You also study law and consider how law and psychology are linked together in the justice system.

In civil and criminal cases, forensic psychologists may contribute in various ways, such as providing expert testimony in courts or advising the police on effective interview strategies. During this course you study the theories of criminal behaviours and develop an understanding of why some individuals become criminals.

By studying forensic psychology in a legal context, you learn to understand how other disciplines and social factors influence its theory, research and development. This illustrates the strengths and limitations of psychology in a forensic context.

You study how psychological research can inform approaches to effectively detecting crimes and how criminals are convicted. And you learn to evaluate and use different research approaches from with forensic psychology.

The course is split into three main sections, each worth a third of the marks. One section is devoted to studying criminal law, one to studying criminal psychology and the final section is your dissertation or research project.

With the support and guidance of a tutor, you complete a self-designed research project using methods gained during the course. This allows you to bring the legal and psychological aspects of the course together.

We have chosen not to seek British Psychological Society (BPS) accreditation for our course as this allows us to teach a greater variety of topics and to explore legal contexts in more depth.

In comparison to most accredited courses, our course contains much more training in criminal law and its applications. We focus more on applying psychology to criminal investigations, rather than assessing and treating offenders.

If you already work within a criminal justice setting for example, youth offending teams, the Police Force, Probation Service or courts, the course equips you with valuable skills to inform professional activities. If you have studied psychology at undergraduate level and you want to expand your forensic psychology skills, this course gives you a good grounding.

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