The Master's in Crime Analysis and Prevention (MAPc) is an official online master's in criminology, unique in Spain and Latin America, designed to form expert professionals in crime analysis and prevention. Highly qualified and prestigious international faculty participate in this program, which is presented with modern learning technology entirely by virtual media (online classes, tutorials via video conferencing or messaging, forums, interactive teaching material, etc.), whose evaluation is continuous and completely online. MAPc is a one-year program consisting of 60 ECTS credits.
This program offers modern specialization for criminologists, police, policy makers and technicians, experts and professionals in safety, crime prevention, and crime management. Its curriculum presents students with theories and techniques of geographical analysis of crime, criminal profiling, advancing applications of situational crime prevention, assessing risks of violence, as well as other topics and lines of research that make this program unique due to its applied content.
From a modern criminological perspective and based on criminal sciences, the Master's in Crime Analysis and Prevention prepares its students to use tools, such as the ArcGIS (ESRI) platform, enabling them to determine locations where crime is concentrated, show geographic distribution patterns of crime, and apply criminal profiling techniques.
Regulated profession: No
Doctorates providing access:
This online graduate program in criminology is directed at university students seeking training and specialization in security and criminology, individuals with undergraduate degrees pursuing doctoral-level education, law enforcement authorities the world over; public and private security directors, managers, coordinators, and consultants; policy makers and technicians in national and international organisms both public and private, in addition to others interested in these disciplines.
ECTS credits: 60
| Core | Required | Elective | External internships | Final Master's Project |
|---|
| 0 | 49.5 | 0 | 0 | 10.5 |
Design
This 60-ECTS credit graduate criminology program is presented online from October to June.
This program offers students a combination of theoretical and practical knowledge via an online methodology that facilitates easy, advanced, dynamic, interactive, and continuous learning, for which examinations are taken exclusively online. This way, via information and communications technology (ICT), students take charge of their own learning by participating in activities individually and with other students, reflecting on what is done and the results achieved, ultimately improving critical thinking, collaborative attitudes, and professional skills autonomously.
Throughout this process, the Virtual Campus constitutes a fundamental tool for interaction between instructors and students. As such, both groups may establish direct communication various ways:
- Virtual master classes: In each course, the expert faculty present virtual conferences that are available to students via the Virtual Campus.
- Interactive teaching material: Each course has a digitized syllabus.
- Individual and group tutorials: Via videoconferencing, students take part in tutorials with faculty and classmates.
- Forums: Forums are held to discuss significant aspects from each course.
- Bibliographic resources: notable bibliographic material is made available to students.
This criminology program is taught by prestigious national and international faculty and specialists. In order to improve the quality of the program contents and to support students in the learning process so they may take full advantage, this program has various teaching figures:
- Coordinating Instructor: Each course has an instructor responsible for coordinating its contents, responding to issues raised by students, organizing & moderating forums, giving video lectures; in short, the instructor directs said course.
- Expert Instructor: Every course contains a set of at least ten video lectures entitled "Fundamental Concepts." The expert instructor presents these knowledge pills, and this person facilitates professionals, investigators, and experts of the highest international levels to share their knowledge about a specific topic in depth that constitutes a fundamental issue of such set.
- Final Master's Project Adviser: The Final Master's Project is an original theoretical or practical scientific assignment that applies and demonstrates knowledge and skills gained throughout this program. To carry out the Final Master's Project, each student is assigned an adviser during Fall Semester, and this person is tasked with directing and mentoring the student's work about a line of investigation from the program.
From the beginning of each course, a general virtual classroom is activated for taking part in video conferences and a general forum for resolving doubts related to such course's methodology, grading procedures, and others that arise from the blocks in the syllabus.
Program Tutor
An instructor-tutor is assigned to each student, and this person is responsible for personally assisting and advising the student on academic issues (organizing study time, distributing the number of credits, exam calls, facilitating access to university resources, etc.). In short, this entails individualized monitoring of student learning so they achieve better academic results and greater integration into university life.
Courses
Competencies
General competencies
- Ability to formulate hypotheses about designing, planning, and implementing activities.
- Ability to evaluate evidence, tools, and instruments for crime analysis, reaching appropriate conclusions that may lead to crime prevention.
- Ability to analyze data, including qualitative information, and an understanding of crime statistics.
- Ability to recognize problems associated with safety and crime, acting in accordance with the ethical guidelines established by professional organizations.
- Ability to identify criminological problems, ask questions about them, and plan their scientific study.
- Ability to analyze and address the criminal phenomenon from an empirical and multidisciplinary perspective.
- Ability to evaluate, analyze, and report empirical information about crime, victimization, and the responses to these.
- Ability to identify the complex social problems surrounding crime and safety, both generally and individually, and analyze their elements, dynamics, interactions, and consequences.
Specific competencies
- Ability to evaluate and apply relevant techniques for achieving safety for people, facilities, and activities, and know how to apply them in specific situations and contexts.
- Ability to design, apply, and implement strategies and programs leading to preventing crime and victimization, including the design of case studies and the identification of appropriate methods.
- Ability to analyze and address the criminal phenomenon from an advanced empirical and interdisciplinary perspective, and be able to apply the results obtained in a specialized manner in different areas and in specific cases.
- Ability to identify the specific elements involved in the occurrence of crime, and evaluate them with advanced precepts in order to establish specialized strategies for their control.
- Ability for specialized analysis on the social factors that influence crime, and delve into the dynamics about their appearance and influence.
- Ability to apply, in a clinical and specialized manner, theories and concepts about criminology to explain and predict crime, victimization, and deviant behavior.
- Ability to expand upon, from an advanced perspective, the risk of crime, as well as the needs of specialized prevention in various specific areas of criminal behavior.
- Ability to select and apply the most current and advanced strategies for research and data assessment towards the criminal phenomenon, specifically designed for specialized intervention in specific criminological and victimological problems.
- Advanced ability to identify the legal aspects of crime from the perspective of criminal law in order to delve deeper, using specialized analysis, into its relationship with offenders and victims.
- Ability to design advanced intervention programs in the specialized field of crime prevention.
- Ability to use advanced crime analysis tools, specifically designed to facilitate specialized criminological treatment for the intervention and evaluation of crime.
- Ability to define specific and advanced crime prevention programs and specifically evaluate the results of their application.
Final Master's Project
Specific regulations
Final Master's Project (10.5 ECTS credits). Proposed lines of research
- Cybercrime. As much from the criminological perspective and that of the effects of cybercrime, in addition to the study and scope of the rules that govern it, crime occurring in cyberspace constitutes a vast field of research in its concrete manifestations as well as in the possibilities of scientific approaches to it.
- Application of geographic information systems to the criminal phenomenon. These allow establishing crime patterns and creating criminal maps for defining criminogenic areas, thus learning the displacement of crime and predicting its behavior. These tools are very useful for designing police intervention as well as for creating security policies.
- Traffic crime. Traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of death today. Their prevention by both deterrence and regulations, as well as by knowledge of the phenomenon and the criminal, is one of the main tools for reducing the incidence of these behaviors on our roads.
- Criminological profiling. Thorough examination of this technique of criminological investigation by which identifying and determining the main characteristics of behavior and personality of certain criminals based on observable evidence in their crimes becomes possible, in the manner of committing them and in the study of the scene of the crime.
- Assessment of the risk of recidivism. Analysis, application, and creation of tools that allow estimating the probability of the occurrence of violent behavior in the future and that permits assessing the need and type of treatment to apply in a specific case.
- Violent youth groups. Profiles and types of youth groups. Analysis of the types of criminal and violent behaviors. Prevention models and systems applied to these cases. Profile of members and victims of violent youth groups.
- Intimate partner violence. Analysis of the phenomenon of intimate partner violence, in a broad sense, to learn the different factors, variables, and processes in which each party is involved, with the further objective of being able to intervene with them.
- Prevention of urban crime. Today, the phenomenon of urban crime has evolved, creating different problems that are also linked to those traditional. Some of the traditional factors related with it have changed, due to the generation of new urban models and globalizing phenomena. Appropriate knowledge of all of these aspects should allow for the establishment of appropriate community prevention policies.
- Policing models. The police, as an element of formal control, play a special role, not just in the fight against crime, but also in its prevention. Beyond the traditional models of police intervention, new policing models oriented at solving problems, and applying techniques of situational prevention, must appropriately respond to the new demands of police action.
Access and Admissions
Access
According to the provisions in Royal Decree 1393/2007, of 29 October, and amended by Royal Decree 861/2010, of 2 July, which establishes the organization of official university education, the conditions for admission into the Master's in Crime Analysis and Prevention are the following:
For access to official master's education, applicants must hold either an official Spanish university degree or one conferred by a higher education institution in a country belonging to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) that entitles access to master's education in such country.
Access may also be granted to those possessing a degree from an educational system outside the EHEA, without requiring its homologation, but following verification by the UMH that the degree represents an educational level that is equivalent to the corresponding official Spanish university degree and that it entitles access to graduate education within the issuing country. Access this way does not mean, under any circumstance, homologation of the degree the interested party holds, or its recognition for anything besides acceptance into a master's program.
Admissions
Those with educational backgrounds directly related to the master's program contents will be granted admission preference.
It is therefore stated explicitly but not exhaustively that applicants holding undergraduate degrees in or equivalent to law, criminology, psychology, and/or sociology will receive admission preference.
The selection criteria for applicants are the following:
1) The academic record will account for 40% of the final assessment. Taken into consideration will be the undergraduate education grade point average.
2) Grades in undergraduate subject matter that corresponds to lines of work related to the master's will account for 10% of the final assessment.
3) Work done and seminaries attended related to the master's lines of work will account for 5% of the final assessment.
4) Professional profile/career that is related to lines of work in analysis and crime prevention will account for 10% of the final assessment.
5) Other criteria will account for 5% of the final assessment:
a) Knowledge of languages with a scientific interest, preferably English. An official document will accredit this.
b) Knowledge about statistics.
6) An application essay will account for 30% of the final assessment. The applicant's arguments for participating in the master's program will be considered, along with the compatibility of their expectations with the requirements for doing so.
All documentation will be evaluated by the Assessment and Selection Committee, which will be formed by the Master's coordinator and two faculty members. In order to be admitted, applicants must obtain at least 50 points out of the possible 100.