How To Become A Criminal Analyst: What It Is and Career Path

What is a criminal analyst and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

2 min read

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a criminal analyst. For example, did you know that they make an average of $38.9 an hour? That's $80,912 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 3% and produce 20,600 job opportunities across the U.S.

ScoreCriminal AnalystUS Average

Salary

6.3

Avg. Salary $80,912

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

6.1

Growth rate 3%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.0

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.67%

Asian 2.83%

Black or African American 12.02%

Hispanic or Latino 17.15%

Unknown 5.00%

White 62.33%

Gender

female 42.39%

male 57.61%

Age - 44

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 44

Stress level

6.1

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.5

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

6.3

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a criminal analyst

Explore criminal analyst education requirements

Most common criminal analyst degrees

Bachelor's

62.8 %

Associate

14.2 %

Master's

13.5 %

Start to develop specific criminal analyst skills

Skills	Percentages
Law Enforcement Agencies	31.58%
NCIC	7.79%
Criminal Investigations	6.49%
Background Checks	5.97%
Crime Trends	5.53%

Complete relevant criminal analyst training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New criminal analysts learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a criminal analyst based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real criminal analyst resumes.

Research criminal analyst duties and responsibilities

Collaborate with the ITC and J2 to offer new ideas to accomplish overall mission successes.
Interview confidential informants and other sources to collect and analyze information regarding criminal activity in relation to terrorism and drug trafficking.
Prepare reports in support of ongoing investigations and prosecutions.

Get criminal analyst experience

Generally, it takes 2-4 years to become a criminal analyst. The most common roles before becoming a criminal analyst include internship, intelligence analyst team lead and team leader.

Prepare your criminal analyst resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your criminal analyst resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a criminal analyst resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable criminal analyst resume templates

Build a professional criminal analyst resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your criminal analyst resume.