Professor Alison Liebling - Biography
Contact Details | |
 | |
| Room: 2.6 | |
| Tel: +44 (0)1223 335371 | |
| Email: al115@cam.ac.uk | |
Go to:Research Abstract |
Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Director of the Prisons Research Centre
Director of the Ph.D. Programme
Biography
Alison Liebling published her first book, Suicides in Prison, in 1992. She has continued to conduct a wide range of empirical research in prisons, including studies of young offender throughcare (From Custody to Community (1992), with D MacAllister and A K Bottomley); an evaluation of two small units for difficult prisoners in Scotland (An Evaluation of Barlinnie and Shotts Units, Scottish Prison Service Occasional Papers No 7 (1994), with A K Bottomley and R Sparks); an evaluation of Wolds private remand centre (Privatizing Prisons: Rhetoric and Reality (1997), with A James, A K Bottomley and E Clare); an evaluation of incentives and earned privileges (Incentives and Earned Privileges in Prison, Home Office Research Findings 87 (1999), with G Muir, G Rose and A E Bottoms); an ethnographic study of staff-prisoner relationships (The Prison Officer (2001), with D Price); a study of the decision-making process on discretionary life sentence panels (An Exploration of Decision-Making on Discretionary Lifer Panels, Home Office Research Study 213, with N Padfield 2001); an evaluation of close supervision centres (An Evaluation of Close Supervision Centres, Home Office Research Study 219, with E Clare and A K Bottomley 2001); and a recent study on measuring the quality of prison life (Measuring the Quality of Prison Life, Home Office Research Findings 174, with H Arnold 2002). She has recently published articles arising from this work, and on conducting prisons research, in Punishment and Society, Criminal Justice , Theoretical Criminology and the British Journal of Criminology. She completed a book called Prisons and their Moral Performance: A Study of Values, Quality and Prison Life in 2004 (Oxford: Clarendon Press), assisted by Helen Arnold, and an edited book on The Effects of Imprisonment with Shadd Maruna, in 2005. Her current research includes a detailed evaluation of values, practices and outcomes in public and private sector prisons, and a repeat of a study of staff-prisoner relationships being conducted at HMP Whitemoor.
Alison is co-editor of Punishment and Society, and a co-editor of the Oxford University Press Clarendon Series.
Books
Liebling, A.; assisted by Arnold, H. (2004) Prisons and their Moral Performance: A Study of Values, Quality and Prison Life, Oxford: Clarendon Studies in Criminology, Oxford University Press
Liebling, A. and Maruna, S. (eds) (2005) The Effects of Imprisonment, Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing
Liebling, A., Price, D. and Shefer, G. (2011) The Prison Officer, 2nd edition, Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing
Liebling, A. (1998) (ed) Deaths of Offenders; The Hidden Side of Justice, Waterside Press: London
Liebling, A. (1996) (ed) Deaths in Custody II: Caring for People at Risk, Whiting and Birch: London
Liebling, A. (1992) Suicides in Prison, Routledge: London
Recent book chapters:
Digard, L. and Liebling, A. (in press) 'All Together Now: The Effects of Learning and Evaluating Gamelan in a Women's Prison', forthcoming in L. Cheliotis (ed) The Arts of Imprisonment: Control, Resistance and Empowerment. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
Crewe, B. and Liebling, A. (2011) 'Are Liberal Humanitarian Penal Values and Practices Exceptional?', forthcoming in T. Ugelvik, J. Dullum and T. Mathiesen (eds) Nordic prison practice and policy - exception or not? Exploring penal exceptionalism in the Nordic context(s). Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing.
Liebling, A., Crewe, B. and Hulley, S. (2011) 'Conceptualising and Measuring the Quality of Prison Life', forthcoming in D. Gadd, S. Karstedt and S. F. Messner (eds) The Sage Handbook of Criminological Research Methods, London: Sage Publishing.
Liebling, A. (2010) ''Governmentality' and Governing Corrections: Do Senior Managers Resist?' in L. Cheliotis (ed) Roots, Rites and Sites of Resistance: The Banality of Good. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan Publishing.
Liebling, A. (2008) ''Titan' Prisons: do size, efficiency and legitimacy matter?', in M. Hough, R. Allen and E. Solomon (eds) Tackling Prison Overcrowding: Build More Prisons? Sentence Fewer Offenders? Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 63-80.
Liebling, A. (2008) 'Why Prison Staff Culture Matters', in J. M. Byrne, D. Hummer and F. S. Taxman (eds) The Culture of Prison Violence. Allyn and Bacon Publishing, Boston USA, pp. 105-122.
McLean, C. and Liebling A. (2008) 'Prison Staff in the Public and Private Sector', in J. Bennett, B. Crewe and A. Wahidin (eds) Understanding Prison Staff. Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing, pp: 92-114.
Liebling, A. (2008) 'Effects of Imprisonment', in Y. Jewkes and J. Bennett (eds) Dictionary of Prisons and Punishment. Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing, pp. 79-81.
Liebling, A. (2008) 'Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP)', in Y. Jewkes and J. Bennett (eds) Dictionary of Prisons and Punishment. Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing, pp. 134-136.
Liebling, A. (2008) 'Measuring the Quality of Prison Life (MQPL)', in Y. Jewkes and J. Bennett (eds) Dictionary of Prisons and Punishment. Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing, pp. 163-164.
Liebling, A. (2008) 'Suicide in Prison', in Y. Jewkes and J. Bennett (eds) Dictionary of Prisons and Punishment. Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing, pp. 284-285.
Recent articles
Crewe, B., Liebling, A. and Hulley, S. (2011) 'Staff Culture, Use of Authority and Prisoner Quality of Life in Public and Private Sector Prisons', Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 44(1): 94-115.
Liebling, A., Crewe, B. and Hulley, S. (2011) 'Values and Practices in Public and Private Sector Prisons: A Summary of Key Findings from and Evaluation', in Prison Service Journal, No.196, pp. 55-58.
Crewe, B., Liebling, A., Hulley, S. and McLean, C. (2010) 'Prisoner Quality of Life in Public and Private Sector Prisons' (under review)
Liebling, A. (2009) 'Identifying and Measuring Prison Moral Climates' in The Correctional Psychologist, IACFP quarterly newsletter, International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology (IACFP).
Liebling, A. (2008) 'Incentives and Earned Privileges Revisited: Fairness, Discretion, and the Quality of Prison Life', in Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention 9: 25-41.
Ross, M. W., Diamond, P., Liebling, A. and Saylor, W. G. (2008) 'Measurement of Prison Social Climate: A comparison of an inmate measure in England and the US', Punishment and Society, 10(4): 449-476.
Shefer, G. and Liebling, A. (2008) 'Prison Privatisation: In search of a business-like atmosphere?' Criminology and Criminal Justice, 8(3): 261-278.
Liebling, A. (2006) 'Prisons in Transition', International Journal of Psychiatry and Law, 29: 422-430.
Cheliotis, L. and Liebling, A. (2006) 'Race Matters in British Prisons: Towards a Research Agenda', British Journal of Criminology 46(2): 286-317.
Other
Liebling A.; Tait, S.; Durie, L.; Stiles, A. and Harvey J.; assisted by Rose, G. (2005) An Evaluation of the Safer Locals Programme, Institute of Criminology, Cambridge: University of Cambridge.