That’s a completely valid sentiment. But when competing for jobs in the FBI and other federal bureaus that do crime research, you will be competing with people who have that kind of experience, and you will be at a disadvantage. However, I do want to clarify that I didn’t mean “police officer” when I said law enforcement. There are a lot of different ways to work in the military or law enforcement aside from being the person with the weapon arresting people, as you put it. LE agencies hire analysts, too, just like the FBI et al.
Where are you reading this? This doesn’t match up with my experience in academia and research.
From a traditional university standpoint think about it this way: There are far fewer department of criminology and criminal justice than sociology. If a department needs a sociology professor, they are going to prefer a sociology PhD holder to a criminal justice PhD holder, because a sociology PhD holder has been trained as a sociologist and can teach classes in sociology. A CJ PhD holder isn’t a discipline-specific PhD, so many disciplinary departments are more reluctant to hire. On the other hand, a sociologist has no issues getting hired into a CJ or criminology department. Take a look at any sociology department and look at where the PhD holders got their PhDs; compare it to the diverse degrees held in a criminal justice department.
In non-academic environments this maybe doesn’t matter as much, but sociologists still have more versatility across fields because their concentration isn’t so narrow.
This also doesn’t grok with my experience in academia; there aren’t really a lot of professor positions in the social sciences relative to the number of people competing for them. Even if you are seeing a lot of listings on higher ed sites, what you’re not seeing is the number of PhDs who are competing for those slots (PhDs in criminal justice and criminology AND PhDs in related fields that can compete for those jobs, too - sociology, psychology, economics, political science, anthropology, social work, etc., with relevant research). Take a look at some recent articles on the social science job market in academia. It’s not great!
Academics do sometimes transition to non-academic research positions after working in the academy, though. At that point, however, the content of your research and how much you’ve published will be a lot more important than the degree itself. You could be an economist, for example, with a lot of research on the economics of the federal justice system and end up doing that kind of research for a federal employer.