You may be attracted to a career in criminal justice because it sounds exciting to track down criminals.Or you might be a curious person who always wants to solve a good mystery. If you also happen to have a knack for critical thinking, becoming a criminal investigator is right up your alley.

But enrolling in a criminal justice program can open up career opportunities above and beyond criminal investigator. For example, an emerging focus within criminal justice is computer crimes. With this focus, you would be working to track down hackers who commit identity theft, those that start viruses, or simply using your computer forensics knowledge in order to find evidence against white-collar criminals.  By choosing a minor or a concentration within a criminal justice program, you will give yourself a better chance to get the job you want.

Many programs can set you up for entry-level jobs as security guards, crime scene investigators, law enforcement officers, corrections officers or wardens at a corrections facility, or private investigators. Some programs will also let you work toward working in crime mapping or as crime victim’s advocates.

A Bachelors or Associates degree will get you the farthest when applying for those jobs. Diplomas or certificates are best for those who are looking to supplement a different degree for a job they already have. For instance a victim’s advocate may already have a Bachelors degree in social work, but may want to learn about criminal justice in order to get a better understanding of the legal system to better help the victims.

What can you learn?

If you enroll in a criminal justice program you can count on learning some basics about criminal law, the court systems, and report writing. Other topics can include crime scene analysis, applied statistics, evidence handling, and liability and ethics. The depth to which you will go into those subjects will depend on whether you go for a certificate program, an Associates or a Bachelors degree, or a graduate program. If you decide to pursue a Bachelors degree, be prepared to also take general education courses in the beginning such as science, reading and math classes.

Length and cost of programs

Lengths of time vary, and therefore the cost of your program will also vary depending on whether you have credits to transfer in or based on how much time it takes you to complete a program. Here is a sampling of estimates.

An Associates degree at Keiser University will require 60 semester credits. Each semester credit is equivalent to 15 clock hours of classroom time, so the Associates degree of 60 semester credits equates to 900 clock hours of classroom time.

At City College, their Associates degree requires 90 quarter credits, which sounds like more, but actually also equates to 900 clock hours of classroom time because each clock hour equates to 10 clock hours of classroom time. The Associates at City College is usually completed in six quarter-terms, each of which is just about 3 months.

South West Florida College only mentions online that their criminal justice Associates degree takes eight quarters to complete.

A Bachelors degree at American Intercontinental University will need 180 quarter credits, which usually takes about 36 months, or 12 quarters, each of which is 10 weeks long.

A Masters degree at Keiser University requires 36 graduate semester credits. Graduate credits are equated the same way as undergraduate credits, but will require about twice as much study time outside of class.

To get an idea of the cost, you can compare to the cost at City College where each credit hour is priced at $255, which means that their Associates degree program would cost $22,950. A Bachelor’s degree program at AIU costs about $60,660.  (Please note that these costs are as of September 2010 and may have since changed.)

Eligibility

All schools will want to see a high school diploma or General Equivalency Diploma (GED). After that, some will have you take a test at their school to determine that you are indeed ready to take college level courses at their school. Those tests usually are in reading or writing, and some may also include a math portion. An additional step some schools take to select their students is to set up an interview in which they will look for the student’s commitment to the program, their support system, and their probability for success. In some of those steps, they may look at past grades.

At American Intercontinental University, to get into a graduate program, you must have averaged a 2.0 grade point average when you earned your Bachelors degree, so it would be a good idea to have transcripts ready. They will also be needed if you plan to try to transfer previous college credits.

Florida has many schools and campuses offering criminal justice programs.  Use our directory of Florida Criminal Justice schools to find the right program for your needs.