What Jobs Can You Do With a Forensic Psychology Degree?

Forensic psychology is a relatively new specialty within the field, yet it has grown to be a highly popular option among college students.

Part of the popularity of forensic psychology is the ability to use the skills you learn in your degree program to enter a wide range of careers. Depending on your level of education, you could pursue dozens of different types of jobs in many different work settings.

The key, of course, is having the appropriate education. While there are some bachelor’s degree programs in forensic psychology (which might prepare you for entry-level positions in this field), by and large, forensic psychologists need to have at least a master’s degree, if not a doctorate.

So, as we explore some jobs for you to consider in forensic psychology, just bear in mind that most of them require an advanced education. Following are the few careers that you may be able to purse with a degree in forensic psychology.

Forensic Psychology Consultant

One of the most common jobs in forensic psychology is to work as a consultant.

Usually, this type of work is done by highly experienced psychologists that have the educational and experiential pedigree to be considered an expert in their field (similar to expert witnesses, which are discussed below).

As a forensic psychology consultant, you will likely be self-employed and offer your services to different businesses and organizations that need your assistance. For example, you might be hired by a defense attorney to provide expert opinions as part of building a defense for their client.

Law Enforcement

A background in forensic psychology will certainly come in handy as a law enforcement officer or detective.

Since forensic psychology exists at the intersection of psychology and law, working in law enforcement is a natural fit. On the one hand, you can use your knowledge of forensic psychology to better understand perpetrators of crime and why they engage in the behaviors they do.

On the other hand, your understanding of the law, legal proceedings, and so forth can be a valuable asset as you help victims of crimes navigate through the legal process.

Another application of forensic psychology in the law enforcement realm is to work as a criminal profiler. This job has been highly dramatized on TV and in movies to make criminal profiling out to be something that it isn’t. Instead of knocking down doors and magically coming up with theories about a person’s behavior, criminal profiling is usually a lot of research in an office setting. Nevertheless, it can be a very exciting way to use a forensic psychology education in the workplace.

Expert Witness

Another career possibility in forensic psychology is to serve as an expert witness.

Now, this is not a career that you start right after graduation. Instead, expert witnesses have years and years of experience in their field of expertise. This means that becoming an expert witness will need to be a long-term goal.

How you get to that goal will depend. A background in law enforcement, private practice, or even consulting as a forensic psychologist will certainly help you build your knowledge, skills, and experience to one day work as an expert witness for the courts.

Licensed Professional Counselor

With a master’s or doctoral degree in forensic psychology, you might be able to pursue a career as a licensed professional counselor, or LPC.

These psychology professionals work in traditional therapeutic settings and provide treatments and interventions to people that have social, emotional, behavioral, or psychological problems.

For example, an LPC might specialize in working with children that have been physically abused by their parents. As you can imagine, having a background in forensic psychology would be helpful in a situation like this. You would have the knowledge of criminology and the criminal justice system to understand the punishments the parents might incur while also having the therapeutic training to help your clients process what’s happened to them.

This is just one example, though. LPCs work with all kinds of clients with all kinds of mental health needs. Of all the careers on this list, this one might offer the most wide-ranging opportunities.

Researcher

As with any specialty in psychology, there are ample opportunities for research in this field.

Typically, forensic psychology researchers focus their attention on criminal behavior – why it happens, how to address it, and so forth.

Their research might be academic in nature, like conducting a meta-analysis of existing research on criminology. Or, forensic psychology research might involve interviewing people that have been convicted of crimes, people that have been a victim of a crime, law enforcement, and others involved in the criminal justice system.

At the end of the day, the purpose of this kind of research is to answer questions about human behavior, identify new questions to pursue, and, hopefully, identify ways that we can predict and control criminal behavior.