Bachelor of Criminology and Criminal Justice

Griffith was one of the first universities in Australia to teach criminology as its own discipline rather than a corner of sociology or law, going back to the 1970s, and the Griffith Criminology Institute that grew out of that history is still one of the largest concentrations of criminology researchers in the country. That lineage shows up in the degree: it's taught by people who publish the studies that get cited in Four Corners segments on bikie gangs or coercive control law reform, not just people teaching from a textbook.

The degree runs across Mt Gravatt and the Gold Coast and leans hard into Queensland's own criminal justice apparatus for its case material: Queensland Police recruitment pathways, the state's youth justice reforms, and reference to Royal Commission findings turn up constantly in first and second year units. Students choosing the policing or corrections electives get guest lectures from serving officers and, in some years, supervised site visits to correctional facilities.

Because Griffith treats the field as inherently cross-disciplinary, students end up doing law, psychology, and sociology units alongside the core criminology sequence. The honours-track students in particular tend to come out with a stronger empirical research skillset (survey design, crime data analysis) than a criminology graduate from a program housed purely within a law school.