[LAB] Formalised placements in criminological programmes are not a widely used teaching strategy in England and Wales (United Kingdom). This article presents the findings of a small study which explored how placements reinforced and enhanced the criminological understanding of the student and whether there were benefi ts for mentors. The preliminary results indicated a positive correlation between what the student had learned in the classroom, and how this was applied in the “real world”. Building on Wenger’s [NOTE] communities of practice and Dalrymple, Kemp and Smith’s [NOTE] triadic learning, there emerged a parallel model of interactive criminological learning for students and mentors; a model that could not be emulated through traditional pedagogical teaching alone, thus reinforcing the concept of experiential learning (Kolb, 2015) [NOTE], in a journey framed by Burch [NOTE] as that from unconscious knowledge and application to a conscious competent performance.