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Study undergraduate certificate online through Open Universities Australia. Explore all degrees, subjects and short courses now.

Take the first step towards a career in criminal justiceThe Undergraduate Certificate of Criminal Justice and Criminology is a pathway qualification into working in the field of law. Ideal for those considering a career in criminal law, this course provides an introduction to fundamental concepts of criminology. In this short, four-unit course, students will develop an understanding of the major theoretical models of crime and the construction of the Australian legal system. They will also learn about the procedures the legal system uses to respond to criminal offences.This undergraduate certificate is composed of four units, typically requiring six months full-time study to complete.Students who complete this undergraduate certificate and meet the minimum grade requirement will gain entry into the Bachelor of Laws. Completed units will be credited to the Bachelor of Laws or an alternate degree if preferred.

Explore core concepts in criminal law and unpack the Australian legal system. In just 6 months, you’ll cover basic legal theory, aspects of crime, and law procedure. Gain credit for your studies and think about a future in criminal justice.

Undergraduate Certificate of Criminal Justice and Criminology

Crime and Mental Health

Understanding Victims and Offenders

Fraud and Cybercrime

Crime and Criminal Justice

Gender, Crime and Justice

The Criminal Justice System

Psychological Contributions to Understanding Crime

Critical Issues in Criminology

Mental Disorder and Crime

Crime, Society and Justice

Criminology Skills is designed to develop your academic skills that will be required to achieve success throughout the Criminology degree. Through a series of guided and supported seminars you will participate in applied learning activities to develop your research, academic writing, referencing, and presentation skills. In addition, through group based activities you will also begin to develop employability skills of problem solving, conflict resolution, teamwork, and time management.The subject is also designed for you to begin asking the right questions about crime, harm, and justice. The subject unpacks what crime is, when, where and how it occurs, who is implicated or involved, and why it is understood in particular ways. You will develop important skills in thinking about contemporary criminological debates through understanding varying perspectives surrounding key case studies discussed in lectures and seminars.

Criminology Skills

The subject begins with a broad examination of cybercrime and moves to a specific focus on cyber fraud. The subject explores contemporary criminological theoretical approaches to explaining cyber fraud, analyses offender methodologies and examines cyber fraud victimology. The subject addresses contemporary approaches to prevention and enforcement in Australia and across the world. The role of relevant government, law enforcement, regulatory agencies and the corporate and private sector in the prevention and detection of cyber fraud is addressed.

Understanding and Preventing Cyber Fraud

This subject offers a focused exploration into the realm of environmental criminology, a branch of criminology that examines the role of the immediate physical environment in influencing the potential for criminal activity. Environmental criminology operates on the principle that the environment can shape, facilitate, or hinder criminal behaviour, thus playing a crucial role in understanding and preventing crime. Unlike traditional schools of criminology that may concentrate on the sociological or psychological aspects of criminal behaviour, environmental criminology places a significant emphasis on the spatial and temporal distribution of criminal events in relation to the environment. The subject will be particularly beneficial for students aspiring to operational or policy positions in crime prevention and control. It provides a practical approach to these ends, equipping students with the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively address and mitigate crime through environmental strategies. By understanding the intricate relationship between the environment and criminal behaviour, students will gain valuable insights applicable to real-world scenarios in crime prevention and policy formulation.

Environmental Criminology

This foundation unit provides you with an introduction to the organisation, policies, practices and institutions that constitute the Australian Criminal Justice System. Broadly, this unit takes a scholarly and criminological approach towards the Australian Criminal Justice System. You will be investigating the substantial areas of the justice system including policing, court structures, the Rule of Law, the role of the coroner, sentencing and punishment, transnational policing, wrongful convictions, forensic expert witnesses, crime prevention and case studies. The unit is delivered through a combination of traditional and problem-based teaching methods. The unit provides you with a foundation for study in criminology and the social sciences more generally.

Get to know the Australian criminal justice system. You’ll explore key institutions including the courts, the coroner, and the police. Study approaches to crime prevention and wrongful conviction. Step through the practices of sentencing and punishment.

Previously named &quot;Psychology of Crime&quot;, this subject is designed to complement Crime, Society and Justice. The subject focuses on individual-level explanations of criminal behaviour. The contributions of evolutionary, genetic, bio-behavioural and trait theories, social learning, developmental and social psychological theories are examined. Implications of these theories for the criminal justice system and crime prevention are examined.This subject addresses the question &quot;What is it about individuals and their experiences that produce criminal behaviour?&quot;. Psychologists are concerned with how an individual’s biological make-up, personality, upbringing, current circumstances and so forth produce criminal behaviour. The unit examines criminal behaviour in terms of nine theoretical perspectives: evolutionary theories, genetic theories, biobehavioural theories, psychodynamic theories, trait theories, behavioural theories, social learning theories, development theories, and environmental theories. The subject also examines the implications of these theories for three areas criminology: the functioning of the criminal justice system, crime prevention, and the rehabilitation of offenders.

Delve into scientific theories that explain why people become criminals. You’ll explore links between criminal behaviour and personality, upbringing, and more. Use this knowledge in crime prevention and offender rehabilitation.

Psychological Explanations of Criminal Behaviour

Domestic and family violence is a pressing social issue with significant implications for individuals, couples, families, and communities. It makes up a large portion of cases in justice, health, and social systems in Australia and around the world. This course provides students with a critical understanding of the dynamics, distribution, outcomes, and responses to domestic and family violence. Students will learn about key topics such as coercive control, how children are involved in domestic and family violence, the role of technology in abuse, and domestic violence homicide using real-world examples. Students will gain critical research literacy skills to interpret key data sources on domestic and family violence. Students will practice skills to effectively and accurately communicate complex information about domestic and family violence.

Understanding Domestic and Family Violence

Developing Professionally is a core subject designed to assist students to understand their future professional context and employment. This course focuses on professional skills in the workplace, linking theory and practice and reflective thinking skills. Obtaining a 5 in Developing Professionally is one pre-requisite for Griffith University criminology students planning on enrolling in 3008CCJ Professional Practice.Prerequisites: CCJ102 Developing Professionally 1; 1002CCJ Developing Professionally 1 OR CCJ101 Criminology Skills; 1001CCJ Criminology SkillsStudents should not enrol in the subject if they have completed: CCJ307 Developing Professionally; 3007CCJ Developing Professionally

Continue on your pathway to a real career in criminology or the criminal justice system. You’ll delve into the employment process as you keep exploring your personal strengths and ethos. The professional workplace is just around the corner—so get ready!

Developing Professionally 2

Developing professionally 1 is a core subject designed to assist students to self-reflect on themselves, envisage future career options as well as use this knowledge to develop a plan to best position themselves for employment after graduation. Throughout the subject, students will articulate a vision of themselves and organisations of interest in the criminal justice system. Students will also gain a thorough understanding of who they are, their personal strengths and values and what this means professionally. Lastly, students will be introduced to a step-by-step process for career planning in which they will reflect on themselves, explore career possibilities, and make decisions and set goals as part of a personal development plan to clarify their career pathway and position themselves on the market for employment after graduation. This course takes students through their own personal journey for a professional purpose. Students that have completed CCJ101, as part of their program structure, do not need to complete CCJ102, however if they wish to take this subject it can be added as a free choice elective.Students should not enrol in the subject if they have completed: 2019CCJ, COM15 or CCJ16

Start thinking about your future career in the criminal justice system. Get planning now so that after you graduate your pathway is clear. Think about your strengths, your strategy, and your vision. Find and explore organisations that share your ethos.

Developing Professionally 1

This subject was previously known as Sociology of Crime and Crime, Society and Culture.This subject introduces foundational and contemporary social theories of crime and justice. Theories are examined in their socio-historical context, with attention given to the role of theory in knowledge production about crime causation, criminal justice policy, and social views of justice.Criminology is the social scientific study of crime – its causes, its effects, and how societies respond to crime. Yet these questions are rarely straightforward. Historically, all societies have sought to control crime or deviance, and all cultures have explanations as to why and how people do bad or wicked things. But how crime is defined varies significantly between cultures and societies, and often within them. Criminology in this regard is a fairly new historical invention, its origins dating fewer than two hundred years. Yet even within this time, the social sciences have developed diverse and sometimes conflicting explanations, theories and approaches to understanding, explaining, and redressing crime. Anthropology, economics, psychology, political science, socio-legal studies, and sociology all evidence distinct epistemological and methodological approaches to questions of what causes crime, how crime is defined, and how we should respond to crime.How we define crime is also intrinsically tied to how we collectively and individually define justice. This question is essential in understanding how societies formally and informally define and respond to crime. Formal responses include criminal and civil justice mechanisms tasked with several overlapping and sometimes competing aims such as retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and public safety. Informal responses include social norms and values, social movements, and collective social actions. In some cases there is strong alignment between formal and informal definitions and justice values in society, for example in the case of drink-driving which was once more widely tolerated but over time has become seen by the majority of the public and thus dealt with by policymakers as a serious offence. In other cases there is less alignment between formal and informal definitions and responses to crime, for example in current debates about how to best respond to illicit drug use – through a criminal justice approach, or through a public health approach that decriminalises or legalises use and distribution of some types of illicit drugs?In this regard, theories of crime and justice are not abstracted from the daily experiences and problems in people’s lives. On the contrary, we all “theorise,” every day, in our own lives. When a friend is arrested for drink driving, we theorise how we should respond to them. Do we agree they should lose their license as a result? Do we think they should be required to undergo treatment? What should they have to do in order to take responsibility for this offence and be allowed to drive again? We theorise when we are victimised – why did someone harm us, and what should be done about it? We theorise when bad things happen to people and nothing is done about it.All of this is “theorising,” where we draw from what we know or believe about “what works” and we compare or contrast that against what we know about the situation we are examining. One problem of subject is that we are sometimes wrong – individually and collectively – and part of the role of the social sciences is to investigate and challenge “common sense” notions of crime and justice. This does not mean that the social sciences are above reproach, or that social science itself is infallible. On the contrary, as we will see, the social sciences have offered explanations of crime ranging from the plausible to the absurd. What the social sciences provide, however, is a set of rules or guidelines for how to make knowledge claims about crime beyond that of our own experiences or common sense, and how to test and retest these claims until they are more widely accepted or rejected in lieu of other explanations.Another issue, however, is that people often have very different perspectives on what counts as justice. Social science can measure these attitudes and beliefs, but it is a relatively poor vehicle for making moral statements. Justice and injustice are subjective concepts, which often depend on people’s individual and collective social experiences. What social science does offer, however, is the possibility for us to transcend our own experiences and look at ourselves and our beliefs from the perspective of how others define and experience injustice. For more than a century these have been primary goals of sociology, anthropology, and other social sciences that seek to understand how people experience and make sense of the world, beyond testing hypotheses or measuring social phenomenon.This class explores and investigates these big questions through the lens of social scientific theories and research on crime, justice, and society. As criminology is a multidisciplinary field of study, emphasis is given to sociological, socio-legal, social-psychological, philosophical, and other approaches. Emphasis is also given to exploring and understanding “the social construction of knowledge” – how knowledge about these questions is produced, what type of knowledge are privileged (or silenced) and why, and how such knowledge shapes people’s symbolic and material realities in concrete ways.Students should not enrol in this subject if they have completed CCJ27 Sociology of Crime or CCJ207 Crime, Society and Culture.

In this unit you will look at the significance and regulation of alcohol and illicit drugs in society, and their problematic association with crime and deviance. You will be encouraged to take a critical approach to exploring the complex issues surrounding illicit drugs, alcohol and crime. You will analyse policy responses including law enforcement, prevention, treatment and harm reduction. You will explore the regulation of alcohol and illicit drugs, the complex culture that surrounds their consumption, and the contentious relationship between alcohol and illicit drug use and crime and deviance.

Drugs, Alcohol and Crime

Undergraduate Certificate Criminology Courses & Degrees | Open Universities Australia

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