Salary Expectations

Salaries in the criminal justice field vary widely depending on your education, geographic location and the type of job to which you are applying. Criminal justice jobs that require no college education will generally have lower starting salaries, while positions that require advanced degrees offer competitive packages for potential employees.

Criminal Justice Salary Statistics

A criminal justice salary ranges from $24,000 for entry-level jobs to $170,700 for senior positions. The following list details popular criminal justice jobs and their average salaries:

• correctional officers and administrators: The average salary for correctional officers is $34,560. Administrators in the corrections field earn an average salary of $51,390. Treatment specialists and probation officers earn an average salary of $41,990. Agencies located in urban areas tend to offer higher wages.
• court reporters: Court reporters earn $39,670 on average. Oftentimes, court reporters will supplement their salaried income by taking on additional freelance work. Freelance jobs for court reporters generally offer a per-page fee for transcripts.
• criminologists: Criminologists possess a PhD in criminal justice or criminology and usually hold professorships in colleges or universities. Salaries for full-time criminology faculty members average $64,455. Tenured professors tend to make more than this average ($86,437), while associate professors average $61,732, and assistant professors make an average of $51,545.
• detectives and investigators: The average salary for a detective or investigator is $49,860 annually. The highest paid positions in this field are security/loss-prevention directors and vice presidents, who make far more than the median income at $77,500 per year. Positions that require less education, such as store detectives, can make much less than the average, with entry-level jobs beginning at $25,000.
• FBI agents: An entry-level salary for FBI agents is $39,115, not including overtime, which can add an average of about $10,000 more, per year, to the base salary. Advanced non-supervisory assignments provide a salary of $61,251, while FBI supervisory, management and executive positions offer a starting salary of $72,381 or $85,140 a year, respectively.
• forensic science technicians and forensic psychologists: An experienced forensic scientist can earn $46,080 per year, on average. Forensic psychologists earn between $38,560 and $66,970.
• legal secretaries: Legal secretaries, or paralegals, earn between $37,310 and $42,510. Most paralegals work assisting lawyers while completing their law degree. After completing their degree, paralegals usually advance to a higher salary bracket.
• police officers: Patrol officers in police and sheriff's departments make a median annual income of $45,470. Patrol officers are not generally required to possess a college degree. Police captain positions, on the other hand, usually require a bachelor's degree and average a higher salary, ranging from $46,900 to $75,000.
• sheriffs: A sheriff supervises the police force of a certain area or town. Sheriffs typically hold a bachelor's degree in criminal justice and have 10 years experience as patrolmen. Salaries range from $81,600 to $102,000.

Clearly, the starting salary for criminal justice positions varies greatly depending on the job you are interested in. A college degree is usually necessary if you want to obtain higher-level positions or enter the workforce on the upper end of the salary scale. Many federal and local agencies throughout the U.S. will subsidize tuition if you choose to go back to school after you have already begun a career in criminal justice.