Criminal Justice Majors: Soft Skills for Law Enforcement & Public Safety Career Paths
A degree may open the door to a variety of opportunities and diverse career paths. The degree programs offered at AIU will not necessarily lead to the featured careers. This collection of articles is intended to help inform and guide you through the process of determining which level of degree and types of certifications align with your desired career path.
Because the criminal justice field is so broad—encompassing law enforcement, the courts and the juvenile justice system—it offers a diverse range of potential opportunities and career paths. As a result, hard skills, such as technical knowledge and job training, may vary from one criminal justice career path to another. But there are a number of soft skills—“non-technical” skills or behaviors—that criminal justice majors may find useful across different professional roles and circumstances.
Below we give examples of soft skills that students may work to develop and apply in their criminal justice college courses as well as out in the “real world.”
1. Written Communication Skills
Having strong written communication skills can help you to effectively and efficiently carry out your job duties in a number of different criminal justice administration career paths. For instance, correctional officers and bailiffs may have to write reports and maintain daily logs;1 first-line supervisors of correctional officers may have to transcribe, record, or maintain information on inmates;2 and forensic science technicians may have to write reports that are relied upon in court.3
Knowing how to spell, use punctuation and form grammatically correct sentences are critical skills, but so is understanding the purpose of the written communication you are preparing and its intended audience so that you can adjust your tone and overall writing style4—after all, writing a police report (fact reporting) is not the same as writing a legal brief (persuasive writing). Criminal justice majors have the opportunity to hone their written communication skills through completion of course assignments and examinations.
2. Public-Speaking Skills
How you speak is important. It influences how people perceive you and whether they trust or respect you. But even if you are great at speaking one-on-one with someone, you may not necessarily be great at speaking to larger groups. Often, public-speaking skills need to be nurtured and developed. In the context of working in the criminal justice system, having strong public speaking skills is important whether you are participating in a press conference or giving closing arguments to a jury.
To improve your public-speaking skills, you might start by doing a self-assessment: Are you a confident speaker? Is your natural style formal or informal? Are you able to adjust your tone and word choices depending on the audience? Are you able to adjust your delivery to meet different objectives? Your answers will help you determine which areas may need improvement.
If you are afraid of public speaking, the best thing you can do is practice, practice, practice. When you write a paper, read it out loud as though you were giving a speech to an audience. Do it in front of friends and family if you can. You could also look into whether your degree program offers public speaking classes or extracurricular groups, such as a debate clubs, that focus on public speaking.
3. Time-Management Skills
Many criminal justice career paths require that candidates have strong time-management skills. Consider that criminal and civil cases typically must be brought before the applicable statute of limitations expires—once that happens, the case cannot be brought at all. Law enforcement professionals are therefore up against the clock; investigators needs to gather enough evidence to support a case and do so within a strict time frame. And of course there are all of the other “routine” job tasks that must be managed—meetings, court appearances, off-site visits, paperwork deadlines, etc.
Criminal justice majors can start to develop their time-management skills while still in school. Taking more than one course per semester or quarter involves keeping track of deadlines and schedules, and it also means balancing workloads. This can be especially true of students who pursue an online criminal justice degree program—having the flexibility to study and complete coursework when it is convenient for you means that you are in charge of managing your time responsibly.
4. Active-Listening Skills
Many criminal justice career paths involve frequent interactions with others, sometimes in stressful situations. Depending on the role, you may have to interview witnesses or suspects, or collaborate and share information with individuals at other agencies. During these times, especially in face-to-face interactions, active listening—“a communication technique that emphasizes the listener’s engagement and responsiveness to the speaker ... and requires a conscious effort to understand the speaker’s verbal content [and] nonverbal cues such as body language and tone”5—could prove especially useful.
Developing active listening skills as a criminal justice major can be as simple as trying to take a more holistic and intentional approach to your conversations with others, whether at home, at school, or in a criminal justice internship or training program.
5. Critical-Thinking and Decision-Making Skills
Critical-thinking processes such as deductive reasoning (using general ideas or premises to come to a specific conclusion6) and inductive reasoning (making a prediction about what may happen based on what you know—essentially, making an educated guess7) help us draw conclusions and make decisions. Many criminal justice career paths involve the use of such skills: for example, forensic science technicians must be able to evaluate crime-scene evidence and draw conclusions about what happened,3 and correctional officers must determine the best way to maintain order and discipline, often in stressful situations.1
Critical-thinking and decision-making skills can be developed through criminal justice coursework relating to research methods and statistics, or to criminalistics, for example. These skills can also be developed outside of the classroom, particularly in situations where there may be more than one reasonable course of action to take or decision to make.
FAQs
Criminal justice majors typically take a mix of courses designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the criminal law and justice system: for example, at American InterContinental University, students pursuing an Associate of Science in Criminal Justice (ASCJ) or Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice (BSCJ) online degree program may take courses such as Criminal Justice Today, Introduction to Criminology, Introduction to Criminal Law, Introduction to Law Enforcement, Introduction to the American Court System and Foundations of Corrections. Criminal justice majors may also take courses that examine crime prevention strategies, criminal justice ethics issues, and crisis and emergency management preparedness.
In addition to core courses, undergraduate criminal justice degree programs typically require that students take general education and elective courses. In lieu of choosing individual electives, students in AIU’s bachelor’s degree in criminal justice program have the option to pursue a specialization in Forensic Science or a specialization in Homeland Security and Crisis Management.
When it comes to career paths, criminal justice majors have a number of potential options to consider. For instance, pursuing a criminal justice degree program may help you prepare for a homeland security career path (e.g., Customs and Border Protection Officer), forensic science career path (e.g. Forensic Science Technician), corrections and rehabilitation career path (e.g., Correctional Officer or Jailer) or law enforcement career path (e.g., First-Line Supervisor of Correctional Officers).*
* AIU cannot guarantee employment, salary, or career advancement. The list of potential career paths related to these programs is based on a subset from the Bureau of Labor Statistics CIP to SOC Crosswalk. Some career paths listed above may require further education or job experience.
Detectives typically investigate serious crimes. This may involve conducting interviews, examining records, monitoring suspects, and participating in raids and arrests.8
Holding a criminal justice degree or a law enforcement degree may help you to satisfy the formal educational requirement for certain detective roles, but there are other requirements that typically must be met as well. Graduating from an agency’s training academy and completing on-the-job training is typically required. Some employers may prefer candidates who speak a foreign language. Other requirements often include being at least 21 years old, meeting physical fitness standards, and having no history of a felony conviction or drug use.8
Yes, there is a difference between criminology and criminal justice. Criminology is the study of crime and criminal punishment, i.e., why people commit crimes. Criminal justice, meanwhile, is the study of the system of law enforcement, i.e., the law and legal institutions dealing with those accused or convicted of crimes.
Wages may be influenced by many different factors: industry, geographic location, skill level, educational attainment, economic conditions and so on. With that said, a good place to start investigating wage information is through the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Outlook Handbook. There you can find information on median wages for various occupations, projected job growth and more. Wage/salary information may also be found by searching public records (in the case of public-sector employees) or job postings. Certain websites also offer salary information for various roles based on users’ reported earnings (note that reported earnings are not the same as verified earnings).
Learn more about AIU’s 100% online criminal justice degree programs, or apply now.
AIU cannot guarantee employment, salary, or career advancement. Not all programs are available to residents of all states. REQ2233080 06/2026.
1 Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, “Correctional Officers and Bailiffs,” <https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/correctional-officers.htm> (last visited June 30, 2026).
2 National Center for O*NET Development, O*NET OnLine, “33-1011.00—First-Line Supervisors of Correctional Officers,” <https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/33-1011.00> (last visited June 30, 2026).
3 Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, “Forensic Science Technicians,” <https://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/forensic-science-technicians.htm> (last visited June 30, 20206).
4 Jean Reynolds, Ph.D., “Focus on Written Communications: Effective Professional Writing,” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin (Apr. 9, 2020), https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/focus/focus-on-written-communications-effective-professional-writing.
5 Nancy W. Comstock, “Active Listening,” EBSCO (2022), <https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/communication-and-mass-media/active-listening>.
6 Cleveland Clinic, “Deductive Reasoning: What It Is, Uses & Examples” (updated Feb. 2 2024), <https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/deductive-reasoning>.
7 Cleveland Clinic, “Inductive Reasoning: What It Is, Examples & Types” (updated Feb. 2, 2024), <https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/inductive-reasoning>.
8 Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, “Police and Detectives,” <https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/police-and-detectives.htm> (last visited June 30, 2026).