Emergency Management vs. Criminal Justice Degrees for Policing Careers

Key Infor­ma­tion:

• Foren­sic sci­ence applies sci­en­tif­ic meth­ods to crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions and legal process­es to help solve crimes and deter­mine guilt or innocence.
• Careers in foren­sic sci­ence are grow­ing quick­ly, with an expect­ed 13% job growth through the ear­ly 2030s, offer­ing many opportunities.
• Edu­ca­tion­al require­ments typ­i­cal­ly include a bachelor’s degree in foren­sic sci­ence, biol­o­gy, or phys­i­cal sci­ence, with addi­tion­al train­ing in spe­cial­ized areas like foren­sic pathol­o­gy or dig­i­tal forensics.
• Foren­sic sci­en­tists can work in var­i­ous roles, such as crime scene inves­ti­ga­tors, foren­sic ana­lysts, and dig­i­tal foren­sics ana­lysts, each with unique respon­si­bil­i­ties and opportunities.

Polic­ing is a much broad­er field than work­ing as a patrol offi­cer. With job oppor­tu­ni­ties in local, state, and fed­er­al agen­cies, and careers focus­ing on every­thing from ter­ror­ism to drug enforce­ment to bor­der patrol, you can explore a wide range of jobs.

Like­wise, you can pre­pare for polic­ing jobs in any num­ber of ways. In some cas­es, police acad­e­my train­ing is enough. In oth­er cas­es, polic­ing degree pro­grams are required or strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed. In these cas­es, crim­i­nal jus­tice and emer­gency man­age­ment degrees are the most common.

No mat­ter the polic­ing careers you’re inter­est­ed in, an edu­ca­tion is crit­i­cal. A degree intro­duces you to broad top­ics that build soft skills like effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lead­er­ship, and team­work. Cours­es spe­cif­ic to crim­i­nal jus­tice or emer­gency man­age­ment build need­ed hard skills as well, such as weapons train­ing and cri­sis management.

This guide explores the basics of crim­i­nal jus­tice and emer­gency man­age­ment degrees. Use the infor­ma­tion out­lined below to learn about the careers you can pur­sue with both degrees and the advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages of hav­ing a job in policing.

Relat­ed:

• Top Schol­ar­ships for Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Crim­i­nol­o­gy Students
• Best Online Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Degree Bachelor’s Programs
• Fastest Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Degree Online Bachelor’s Programs
• Most Afford­able Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Degree Bach­e­lor Programs

Overview of a Criminal Justice Degree

The most com­mon crim­i­nal jus­tice degree is a bach­e­lor of art or sci­ence. This four-year degree includes course­work in polic­ing and law enforce­ment, the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and cor­rec­tions, and human behavior.

Typ­i­cal­ly, bachelor’s degrees require 120 cred­its to grad­u­ate, which you can com­plete in four years of full-time stud­ies. Rough­ly half of those cred­its are gen­er­al cours­es that give you a broad under­stand­ing of math, sci­ence, Eng­lish, and oth­ers. Rough­ly the oth­er half of the required cred­its are in the crim­i­nal jus­tice realm. The table below high­lights some of the core sub­jects you’ll study in this degree program.

Com­plet­ing a crim­i­nal jus­tice degree can lead to many dif­fer­ent polic­ing careers. For exam­ple, you might work as a patrol offi­cer with a local police depart­ment. Alter­na­tive­ly, you might pur­sue a career in cor­rec­tions work­ing as a bailiff at a prison. Anoth­er option would be to work at the fed­er­al lev­el for the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tions or a sim­i­lar agency.

Relat­ed:

• Police Career Paths with Emer­gency Man­age­ment Degrees
• What Can I Do with a Bachelor’s in Emer­gency Management?
• Best Bachelor’s in Emer­gency Management
• Most Afford­able Bachelor’s in Emer­gency Management
• Fastest Online Bachelor’s in Emer­gency Management

Overview of an Emergency Management Degree

An emer­gency man­age­ment degree pre­pares you to respond effec­tive­ly in crises, both human-gen­er­at­ed and nat­ur­al. Like crim­i­nal jus­tice, the most com­mon type of degree in emer­gency man­age­ment is like­ly a bachelor’s degree. As not­ed above, this type of degree typ­i­cal­ly requires four years to com­plete and includes both gen­er­al stud­ies and major-area course­work in the realm of emer­gency management.

In many cas­es, you’ll find that emer­gency man­age­ment degrees offer spe­cial­ties in par­tic­u­lar fields. For exam­ple, you might pur­sue a home­land secu­ri­ty degree, a fire response spe­cial­iza­tion, or a haz­ardous mate­ri­als con­cen­tra­tion, to name just a few options. Despite the dif­fer­ences in these nich­es, you’ll typ­i­cal­ly com­plete sim­i­lar core course­work as out­lined in the table below.

Edu­ca­tion for police offi­cers in today’s world often requires at least a cur­so­ry knowl­edge of emer­gency man­age­ment issues. After all, police respond to crises of all types, from domes­tic vio­lence sit­u­a­tions to acts of ter­ror­ism. Hav­ing a degree in this field is even bet­ter than ancil­lary knowl­edge; com­bined with your train­ing as a police offi­cer, you’ll have the train­ing to address cri­sis sit­u­a­tions of all sizes and scopes with skill and competence.

Polic­ing career paths with an emer­gency man­age­ment back­ground include the following:

• Fed­er­al police — Agen­cies like the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency, FBI, and Home­land Secu­ri­ty need agents with polic­ing and emer­gency man­age­ment exper­tise to work in the field before, dur­ing, and after crises.
• SWAT team mem­ber — Spe­cial Weapons and Tac­tics units are on the front lines of crim­i­nal emer­gen­cies and can ben­e­fit from the enhanced plan­ning, lead­er­ship, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills devel­oped in an emer­gency man­age­ment program.
• Emer­gency Response Coor­di­na­tor — Agen­cies of all types (e.g., local police, cor­rec­tion­al depart­ments, fed­er­al police) employ pro­fes­sion­als to over­see and coor­di­nate emer­gency response protocols.

The above list is not exhaus­tive of the pos­si­ble emer­gency man­age­ment careers you can pur­sue, though. Many oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties exist at the local, state, and fed­er­al levels.

Key Differences Between the Two Degrees

While these are both pub­lic safe­ty degrees, there are also sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in crim­i­nal jus­tice and emer­gency man­age­ment. For exam­ple, the pri­ma­ry focus areas are dif­fer­ent. Broad­ly speak­ing, crim­i­nal jus­tice is the study of how to inves­ti­gate and pre­vent crime. Emer­gency man­age­ment, mean­while, focus­es on train­ing you to respond to dis­as­ters and oth­er cri­sis situations.

The dif­fer­ence in focus is evi­dent in the cur­ric­u­la of these fields and the type of train­ing you’ll under­take. Crim­i­nal jus­tice cur­ric­u­la pre­pare you for a career in law enforce­ment with stud­ies of legal the­o­ry, polic­ing tech­niques, and pub­lic policy.

Like­wise, train­ing empha­sizes under­stand­ing crim­i­nol­o­gy, how to pre­vent crime, and the eth­i­cal and legal respon­si­bil­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with polic­ing and cor­rec­tions. As such, a crim­i­nal jus­tice degree is often the best degree for polic­ing — you’ll have the skills nec­es­sary to address real-world sce­nar­ios rang­ing from traf­fic vio­la­tions to mur­der investigations.

Alter­na­tive­ly, an emer­gency man­age­ment cur­ricu­lum focus­es less on polic­ing and legal issues and more on apply­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion, orga­ni­za­tion­al, and lead­er­ship skills in direct­ing respons­es to dis­as­ters and oth­er crises. The train­ing asso­ci­at­ed with pro­grams like this empha­sizes work­ing with indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties to plan for dis­as­ters, con­duct risk analy­ses, and imple­ment response pro­to­cols effi­cient­ly and ethically.

For exam­ple, with a degree in emer­gency man­age­ment, you’ll be pre­pared to respond to dis­as­ters such as:

• Flood­ing, tor­na­dos, earth­quakes, and oth­er nat­ur­al disasters
• Mass shoot­ing events
• Ter­ror­ist activities
• Trans­porta­tion emer­gen­cies, such as plane crashes

Pros and Cons for Policing Careers

When debat­ing the val­ue of crim­i­nal jus­tice vs. emer­gency man­age­ment degrees for a career in law enforce­ment, it’s nec­es­sary to eval­u­ate the pros and cons of each.

Pros of a Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Degree:

• Enhanced under­stand­ing of polic­ing theories
• Knowl­edge of law and how court sys­tems function
• Expand­ed under­stand­ing of eth­i­cal polic­ing procedures
• Oppor­tu­ni­ties to gain spe­cial­ized knowl­edge, such as cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, juve­nile jus­tice, or mul­ti­cul­tur­al the­o­ries of policing

Cons of a Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Degree:

• Police offi­cer train­ing doesn’t always require a degree
• Time and mon­e­tary out­put to get a degree is high
• Some law enforce­ment jobs require spe­cial­ized train­ing not avail­able in a crim­i­nal jus­tice degree

Pros of an Emer­gency Man­age­ment Degree:

• Acqui­si­tion of spe­cial­ized skills that enhance law enforce­ment education
• Improved lead­er­ship and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, espe­cial­ly those nec­es­sary for respond­ing appro­pri­ate­ly in high-stress situations
• Broad­er knowl­edge base with train­ing in pub­lic pol­i­cy and admin­is­tra­tion, orga­ni­za­tion­al lead­er­ship, and pub­lic health
• Gain famil­iar­i­ty with Inci­dent Com­mand Sys­tem and Nation­al Inci­dent Man­age­ment Sys­tem for improved emer­gency response

Cons of an Emer­gency Man­age­ment Degree: 

• Focus on the­o­ry rather than appli­ca­tion of emer­gency man­age­ment prin­ci­ples in the real world
• Time spent get­ting an emer­gency man­age­ment degree takes away from on-the-job train­ing as a police officer
• Not all polic­ing careers require a degree, let alone one not direct­ly relat­ed to day-to-day job performance

Making the Right Choice

Ulti­mate­ly, learn­ing how to become a police offi­cer comes down to your spe­cif­ic career goals. If you envi­sion a career fight­ing crime as a front-line offi­cer of the law, crim­i­nal jus­tice is the bet­ter of the polic­ing degree pro­grams pre­sent­ed here. How­ev­er, if you’re inter­est­ed in the com­bi­na­tion of police work with coor­di­nat­ing respons­es to dis­as­ters, emer­gency man­age­ment is the way to go.

When choos­ing a pro­gram, fac­tors like the cost, time com­mit­ment, and applic­a­bil­i­ty to your career goals are of the utmost impor­tance. If you’re unsure of the pro­gram to pur­sue, con­sult with an aca­d­e­m­ic advi­sor at your school or seek advice from pro­fes­sion­als in crim­i­nal jus­tice and emer­gency management.

Addi­tion­al­ly, you might con­sid­er com­bin­ing ele­ments of both degrees. For exam­ple, you might get a degree in one field and pur­sue an under­grad­u­ate cer­tifi­cate in the oth­er. What­ev­er the case, get­ting real-world train­ing will be the key to your suc­cess in a law enforce­ment career.