Qualification awarded on completion of the course: Degree in Criminology and Public Prevention Policies
European Qualification Supplement: Social Sciences and Law branch
Course structure terms, with final assessment at the end of term
Durada: four years
Teaching load: 240 crèdits ECTS
Places: 80

Presentation

The new Degree in Criminology and Public Prevention Policies at UPF has been designed to train future criminologists in Catalonia and the rest of Spain. The degree therefore places emphasis on three main areas.

The first is criminological research; the modern world requires both discussions and policies to be based on empirical data, and for this reason UPF students receive intensive training which enables them to design and carry out criminological investigations.

The second area is an understanding of the society in which crime is committed and its mechanisms for responding to criminality, and to this end courses in Sociology, Political Science and Law are taught.

Finally, training in Biology and Psychology provides students with knowledge of the biological and psychological bases of some types of antisocial behaviour and enables them to design risk assessment and treatment programmes.

Teaching Aims

We aim to train students to be capable of advising public authorities, police forces, the legal system and the private sector in the area of crime and security.

As well as providing specific knowledge about criminology, the Degree in Criminology and Public Prevention Policies enables students to relate knowledge gained from the fields of Law, Political Science, Sociology, and Psychology, and equips them to apply the skills they have acquired. With this in mind, courses are organised into large-group lectures, and seminar sessions with a maximum of twenty members to enable students to apply and share the theoretical training they have acquired.

As Criminology is a highly internationalised discipline, one of our aims is to enable students to continue their training or to work in any country in Europe. For this reason we encourage student and teaching staff mobility by means of academic exchanges with other European universities. To help students face this challenge as well as possible, an English course with language specific to the field of criminology will be taught during the last two years of the degree, and some modules will be taught in English.

Course Description

The Degree in Criminology and Public Prevention Policies is composed of 240 credits which are distributed among 4 years, each organised into 3 terms. The degree is divided as follows:

Basic modules (60 credits), which provide transversal knowledge, that is, which are of use both to future criminologists as well as to all Social Science and Law graduates.

Compulsory modules (140 credits), which are specific and provide essential knowledge for criminologists, such as the reasons for crime, crime prevention, policing systems, crime typology, the criminal justice system and the way the media works.

Optional modules: the UPF degree offers fourth year students the chance to chose between three tracks depending on their particular interests: Crime and Criminal Justice Systems; Criminological Investigations, and Criminal Biology and Psychology

Work Placements

Criminology and Public Prevention Policies graduates need to have acquired the following general skills: relating general knowledge and knowledge from different disciplines and applying this to the real world to deal with the problem of criminality; information management; presenting ideas in a structured way, both orally and in writing; the ability to work in a team; the initiative to put together proposals, and the ability to analyse social problems to find effective and fair solutions to them.

The specific skills which students will need to acquire include: recognising the main crime risk factors; planning criminological research projects; writing criminological reports; designing proposals for criminological policy and prevention programmes and being capable of evaluating them.

Skills acquired by Criminology and PPP graduates

Career Opportunities

Advising local government agencies on crime prevention issues, security and community matters.

Designing, implementing and evaluating public policies relating to security and crime prevention in the policing and prison sphere, and also on alternative law enforcement measures.

Advising judges and public prosecutors on penalty execution.

Implementing and evaluating risk assessment and crime treatment programmes.

Victim support centres and victimology research centres.

Teaching at various levels and planning and carrying out the multiple empirical research tasks necessary to produce public policies in this area.

Meeting the growing demand for advice from the private sector, in both the security and prevention fields.