subject: What Kind Of Individual Is Best Suited For A Career In Criminal Justice? [print this page] When youre considering a career in criminal justice, you need to make sure that you have the right personality and drive to be successful. Not everyone is capable of looking at crime scenes from day to day. Further, it requires a lot of analysis as well as a lot of different techniques to be able to bring a victim to justice throughout the work week.
Whats important to note about criminal justice careers is that there is virtually no set schedule. Since criminals never sleep, you wont be able to work a typical 9 to 5 job, Monday through Friday. Just as many of the CSI shows portray, it is not uncommon to get a call in the middle of dinner or on the weekend to rush to the scene of a crime.
Every crime scene is different. Sometimes you will have a dead body to use in the investigations and other times you wont. Sometimes you will have a murder weapon and other times you will have to rely on clues around the scene as well as DNA to figure out how to process the scene and continue gathering tips. Because you will need to go about every crime scene differently, you need to have a very analytical mind.
The good news is that you will never get bored on the job. If you dont like a monotonous day at the office, criminal justice careers can help keep you on your toes. What you do one day may be completely different than what you do the following day.
You need to be comfortable in many different environments, too. You need to be equally at home in the field as you are in the lab. The best careers in criminal justice involve being well-rounded. You should be able to process a crime scene as well as be able to do a lot of your own analysis in the lab or conduct research on the computer.
Theres no way to prepare for the crime scenes you may be involved in. This means you need to have a fairly tough stomach. If the idea of looking at dead bodies is something youd rather not do, you may not be a very successful criminal justice investigator.
There are many careers in this field, however many of them involve handling more than one case. Whether you work for the county, the state or a legal facility, you will need to get your hands dirty from time to time. A career in criminal justice can be very rewarding but you need to be prepared for anything.
