Trust Me, I'm a Doctor: Academic Knowledge and Professional Practice in the Criminal Justice Sector
| Author | Jane Creaton, Dr. Phil Clements |
| Pages | 69-78 |
Trust Me, I’m a Doctor: Academic Knowledge and Professional Practice in the Criminal Justice Sector
TRUST ME, I’M A DOCTOR: ACADEMIC
KNOWLEDGE AND PROFESSIONAL
PRACTICE IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE
SECTOR
Ja ne Crea ton, Ass ociate Dea n in the Fa culty of H umaniti es a nd Social Sciences ,
University of Portsmouth & Dr. Phil Clements, Principal Lecturer in Criminal
Justice and Associate Head at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University
of Port smouth
Abstract
Professional doctorates are becoming increasingly well established in UK higher education,
with a growth in the number and diversity of programmes being offered. Several institutions
have now developed professional doctorates which are targeted at criminal justice
professionals. Although there is an increasing body of research which has examined the
impact of professional doctorates, this has tended to focus on the more established
programmes, such as education, engineering and business administration. This article
explores the role of professional doctorates in the specific context of the Criminal Justice
Sector. It provides an overview of the relationship between higher education and criminal
justice institutions and explores some of the tensions between academic and administrative
criminology. It compares recruitment, programme structures, curriculum content and
assessment across selected programmes and considers how these reflect complex sets of
relationships between different higher education institutions and different professions
within the sector. It concludes with a discussion of the future role of professional doctorates
in the sector and analyses the implications for higher education institutions and criminal
justice professionals, and for criminal justice education and training as a whole.
Introduction
Since the first professional doctorates were introduced in the UK in 1992 (Bourner, Bowden
and Laing, 2001) there has been a considerable growth in the number and range of
programmes being offered. The most recent national survey undertaken in 2005 by the UK
Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) identified 192 programmes of fered across a
broad field of disciplinary areas (Powell and Long, 2005). Whilst programmes in areas such
as education, engineering and business administration have become well established, it is
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