Criminal justice postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Each Friday afternoon I update the spreadsheet that records how many reparation hours the young people supervised by our youth offending team have completed that week. It is an unglamorous task, but it has shown me how often a court order meets ordinary obstacles, such as a missed bus, a placement that closes for half term, or a supervisor off sick. As a case administrator I do not make decisions about young people. However, I see how well-intentioned sentences depend on scheduling, transport and paperwork, and I want postgraduate study to help me understand these practical conditions as part of how justice works, rather than as background noise.

My undergraduate degree in Criminology and Sociology gave me a grounding in theories of punishment and social control. My dissertation took me into the detail of a single stage of the process. Over one term I sat in the public gallery of my local magistrates' court and kept structured notes on bail and remand hearings. I recorded how long each hearing took, who spoke and whether a defendant's housing or employment was discussed. With so few cases, I could not draw general conclusions, and I said so in my methodology chapter. Even so, I found it striking how quickly some decisions were made and how much depended on whether a duty solicitor had had time to confirm an address. Planning the observation schedule, obtaining ethical approval for a design that involved no interaction with participants, and coding my notes consistently taught me more about research than any lecture. I was pleased when my supervisor described the chapter as careful and honest about its limits.

Shadd Maruna's Making Good shaped how I read my current work. His account of how people who desist from crime construct a 'redemption script', a story in which their past is reinterpreted rather than denied, made me pay closer attention to the language in the reports I file. Some describe a young person only through risk factors, while others record what they have built or repaired during reparation. I would like to study whether the way a case is written up affects how the next professional reads that person. I am equally interested in the evidence on restorative justice. In particular, I want to know whether its benefits for victims and offenders hold up once programmes are delivered by stretched local services instead of well-funded pilots.

Outside work, I run a five-a-side team that plays on Sunday evenings at a leisure centre. The job is mostly collecting subs, finding a goalkeeper at short notice and keeping eight adults with different shift patterns turning up. It has made me patient and reliable in a way that also helps at work. My allotment is less social but just as useful. Two seasons of growing potatoes and runner beans have taught me to plan months ahead and accept that some results only appear slowly.

I am applying for a Masters in Criminal Justice because I want the methodological training to turn questions I notice at work into research that can be tested properly. In particular, I want to strengthen my quantitative skills, which were the weaker part of my degree, so that I can handle administrative data responsibly and understand what it cannot show. In the longer term I hope to work in research or evaluation within youth justice or probation services. I bring an understanding of how cases move through a busy office, experience of careful observational research and a habit of checking the details others overlook. I am ready to build on these with rigorous postgraduate study.