Where did your interest in Criminal Justice come from?
I’d always been interested in law, so I did a double degree in Law and Criminal Justice during my undergrad at UC because they complement each other and give you more options. During my first year, learning about things like youth crime within the Criminal Justice degree started piquing my interest and made me realise that I wanted to be someone who is around the systems and understanding the why.
Why did you decide to continue study with a master's degree?
By my third year in undergrad, I started doing some really cool research-based assignments and that's where I started to fall in love with the longer, academic research part. I had a few discussions with the director of the Master of Criminal Justice programme, and he told me there was a pathway for me to be able to explore that and develop more advanced skills.
I found that a master’s would enable me to be more self-directed, choose my study topic, hone in on my own research methods, and learn on a deeper level.
What are you currently focusing on?
At the moment I’m looking at criminal justice reform. We have these big, broad, hypothetical discussions that get your brain thinking about alternative strategies and things that may not exist at the moment. You feel like you're brainstorming about the future and quite radical changes that challenge your own thinking.
And then that's all working towards the goal of doing my dissertation, where I've chosen to do a content analysis on what media think about parole board decisions.
What do you like most about the Master of Criminal Justice?
The beauty of postgraduate study is that everyone is really interested in what you’re doing and you form close relationships with the faculty and your peers.
We’ve got an amazing director of Criminal Justice who also teaches into the Master’s programme. He makes sure that you get a supervisor that’s going to be beneficial to your research. Having smaller classes also enables you to have deeper conversations that widen our perspectives and introduce us to things we may never have thought about.
What do you want to do once you’ve completed your Master’s?
I really like the idea of prison reform research or policy analysis, where you get given a problem and you have to conduct the research and bring it back in a tidy report. I got a glimpse of that when I did a summer PACE internship at Christchurch Men's Prison, doing a research report on parole. They really loved my report and actually decided they wanted to use it.
How did your internship influence your future career path?
It was really cool because it felt like I was doing a small report on just one issue in a prison, but the fact that it gets used and is now potentially impacting policy and change showed its significance. It inspired me to continue with a path that uses that master’s level of academia to inform change. My purpose is to help people, and I think changing the systems is how we help those in unfortunate situations get to a better place.
Do you feel that the Master of Criminal Justice is preparing you well to
achieve that?
For sure. The research methods that I’m learning, and finishing my dissertation, will be really beneficial for me to then go out and say “Hey, here’s what I did, here’s an example of what I can do”. And I’ll be doing another PACE internship in an area that interests me, probably somewhere within the Department of Corrections.
Are you part of any UC clubs?
I’ve been a member of CRIMSOC since I started uni, and it’s been quite instrumental in my journey. It’s really cool to connect with like-minded people in my field of study. They do great events like social BBQs or a crime scene investigation day, and they bring in guests and hold job fair panels. I think it's important, as a postgrad, to not only get involved and have that community, but also to expose yourself to those opportunities.
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