Graduate Certificate in Crime Analysis

Changes to this program will take effect in the 2024/2025 academic year.

Available on campus and online, the Graduate Certificate in Crime Analysis at Boston University’s Metropolitan College provides students with a set of courses that develops their ability to use and analyze a variety of data sources to inform the investigations, strategies, and policy decisions of criminal justice organizations. This set of skills is crucial to a growing field within law enforcement and related domains in criminal justice. Data-driven and intelligence-led approaches to crime have become the standard among contemporary criminal justice organizations. The certificate prepares students to fill in-house crime analyst or similar positions, and strengthens the skills of students working in investigations, management, and operations to utilize analysis more effectively.

Learning Outcomes

Students who complete the Graduate Certificate in Crime Analysis will be able to:

• Understand the wide variety of data sources available for crime and intelligence analysis, including data collection methods, uses, strengths, and limitations.
• Prepare different sources of data for analysis (e.g., data reorganization, matching) for use in analysis processes.
• Conduct analysis using a variety of different techniques, including mapping and spatial analysis and other advanced techniques.
• Incorporate analyses into effective written and oral reports that are useful to investigation, strategy, and policy decisions within law enforcement organizations.
• Comprehend the ethical and legal rules and values that govern crime analysis within law enforcement organizations operating in democratic society.
• Inform effective data-driven or intelligence-led investigations, strategies, and policies based on awareness of the contemporary law enforcement and security approaches.

Admissions Information

For current admissions information, please visit the Metropolitan College website.

Required Courses

(four courses/16 units)

• MET CJ 591 Applied Analytical Methods
• MET CJ 612 Crime and Intelligence Analysis
• MET UA 654 GIS and Spatial Analysis

One elective from the following list:

• MET CJ 640 Performance Management Analytics
• MET CJ 705 Threat Assessment
• MET CJ 840 Applied Crime Analysis Project
• MET CS 521 Information Structures with Python
• MET CS 555 Foundations of Machine Learning
• MET CS 677 Data Science with Python
• MET CS 699 Data Mining