5 Qualities the Best People in Criminal Justice Tend to Have

Criminal justice is a dynamic field with lots of exciting roles to fill. Some of the exciting fields within criminal justice include law enforcement, corrections, legal, security, and forensics. If you’re drawn to the criminal justice field, here are some of the 5 most useful traits that will you help you succeed.

Excellent Personal Ethics

Working in criminal justice requires that you have a strong inner sense of right and wrong. Being in a position of power involves public trust, but abusing that trust can have devastating consequences, not only for the people you serve but for your life as well. You need a well-developed sense of ethics to succeed in criminal justice.

Dealing with a criminal population every day can expose you to more situations that will test your sense of justice. Your actions will come under a lot of scrutiny, so it's essential that you always do the right thing. In addition, your own criminal background should be relatively clear, demonstrating that you have respect for the law.

Leadership Skills

As a criminal justice worker, you will be a role model for recovering offenders. In addition to having excellent personal character, it's also important that you have the kind of leadership skills that will make people want to follow you. Such skills include confidence, a calm demeanor, and a positive attitude.

Many offenders may have lacked healthy role models while growing up and may not have a sense of expected behavior. Your confidence, serenity, and optimism can model how to follow a structure and properly behave, which can help them turn their lives around.

Physical Fitness

Criminal justice can be a physically demanding field. Dealing with offenders can require a lot of physical strength. If you are working in law enforcement in a role such as police officer, you may be required to run, climb, and jump to apprehend offenders. Working in other criminal justice roles may also require good physical fitness, such as working as a corrections officer in a prison.

Calm Demeanor

Working in the criminal justice field can be extremely stressful. Case-loads can be high, which can be stressful and requires good time management. When dealing one-on-one with offenders, stressful situations are very common. In these roles, you may have to apprehend violent offenders and defuse highly-intense situations. Many criminal justice environments such as prisons and police departments may also be understaffed, which requires more work from each member and creates stress in the workplace. Being able to stay calm and collected is a skill that will really help.

In addition to remaining calm, it's also useful if you can think on your feet and adapt quickly when plans change. You may need to react to accidents, deal with temperamental perpetrators, and handle threats. Coming up with good ideas when needed and staying cool in a crisis will come in very handy.

Technological Skills are Essential to Manage Your Workload

The criminal justice field may not be as computer-oriented as some industries, but good candidates still need computer and technical skills to perform well. Almost every aspect of criminal justice requires computer skills, most notable being the sub-specialty of forensics.

When you’re ready to get started in this exciting field, ECPI University can help you get the training you need!

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