---
title: "What can you do with a criminal justice degree?"
description: "15 careers criminal justice graduates commonly move into, with BLS median pay, projected growth and entry requirements for each."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/majors/criminal-justice"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T07:20:09.337Z"
---

# What can you do with a criminal justice degree?

**What the degree involves:** Policing, courts, corrections, criminology, and evidence and procedure law.

Criminal justice is a vocational-leaning degree, and most of its destinations sit inside law enforcement, corrections, courts and private security. It is worth knowing early that many of those jobs hire on an academy, a test and a background check rather than on the degree, so the degree is an advantage rather than the entry ticket.

15 common destinations, ordered most common first rather than highest paid first. 1 of 15 have a master's or a doctoral or professional degree as their BLS typical entry education, and 12 of 15 are projected to grow. A major is a body of study, not a job assignment: these are destinations of people who took the degree, not what the degree entitles anyone to.

| # | Occupation | Median annual wage | Projected change | Openings a year | Typical entry education |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | [Police Officer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/police-officer) | $76,210 | +3.1% | 53,700 | High school |
| 2 | [Correctional Officer and Jailer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/correctional-officer-and-jailer) | $58,940 | -7.8% | 30,100 | High school |
| 3 | [Security Guard](https://nuecareer.com/careers/security-guard) | $38,020 | +0.4% | 161,000 | High school |
| 4 | [Detective and Criminal Investigator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/detective-and-criminal-investigator) | $93,790 | -0.7% | 7,800 | High school |
| 5 | Probation Officer and Correctional Treatment Specialist | $66,270 | +2.6% | 7,900 | Bachelor's |
| 6 | [Paralegal](https://nuecareer.com/careers/paralegal) | $62,890 | +0.2% | 39,300 | Associate's |
| 7 | Private Detective and Investigator | $51,220 | +6.0% | 3,900 | High school |
| 8 | [Custom and Border Protection Officer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/custom-and-border-protection-officer) | $76,210 | +3.1% | 53,700 | High school |
| 9 | Transit and Railroad Police | $90,230 | +3.0% | 200 | High school |
| 10 | First-Line Supervisor of Police and Detectives | $106,040 | +2.9% | 10,900 | High school |
| 11 | Forensic Science Technician | $72,060 | +12.8% | 2,900 | Bachelor's |
| 12 | Fraud Examiner, Investigator and Analyst | $81,100 | +3.1% | 10,300 | Bachelor's |
| 13 | [Intelligence Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/intelligence-analyst) | $93,790 | -0.7% | 7,800 | High school |
| 14 | [Security Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/security-manager) | $106,660 | +3.8% | 13,200 | Bachelor's |
| 15 | [Lawyer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/lawyer) | $159,670 | +4.1% | 31,500 | Doctorate (graduate study) |

Wages are BLS OEWS, May 2025. Projected change, annual openings and typical entry education are BLS Employment Projections. Occupation descriptions are O\*NET. Nothing on this page is estimated and no figure is generated by an AI model.

Full record for any row, including wage percentiles and state-level pay: https://nuecareer.com/careers/{slug} or https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/{slug}. Other majors: https://nuecareer.com/careers/majors

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology