Interview with Tom Riley

Can you briefly summarise your time at the Institute of Criminology?

I enrolled in it after working for 5 years. I did my undergraduate degree back home in New Zealand- it was a Law degree at the University of Auckland. Then after I graduated in 2017, I spent 2 years working as a judge's clerk at a courthouse doing legal research for the judges. Then I spent 3 years working as a Crown prosecutor, which is pretty similar to working at CPS in the UK.

It was great going back into an academic environment, leading life at a slightly different pace and challenging myself to think about things in a more academic way.

This was quite different after five years professionally, so it obviously requires you to approach problems in a different way. It was certainly challenging, but I came to really enjoy thinking about things differently.

What convinced you to study Criminology?

I wanted to do criminology because I work exclusively in the field of criminal law. I did also have some interest in doing an LLM, but criminal law is what I'm most interested in. I wanted to explore some very general broad questions that had been playing on my mind while working, and I thought that criminology would be a bit of forum for me to pursue those interests academically.

On an LLM, you might be able to do one or two papers on criminal law, but you'd also likely end up doing some more commercial things, so it just interested me more to do criminology.

Why did you decide to come to Cambridge?

I started off on the basis that I wanted to study overseas. New Zealand's very far away from the rest of the world, and the UK was probably my first choice for various reasons, including having lots of friends and family here, and I suppose a cultural connection with New Zealand.

I chose Cambridge because it seemed the best fit for me, I think. And then really ended up enjoying my time there.

Can you briefly describe your thesis?

So fortunately, we were essentially given free rein to write our theses on any topic under the very broad umbrella of criminology.

Initially, that freedom of choice meant it took me a while to land on a topic. But eventually, I chose to write about a particular immigration policy which was operative in Australia for a number of years. Essentially, any non-citizen resident in Australia, who was sentenced to two years imprisonment or more, was automatically deported at the conclusion of that sentence regardless of how long they've lived in Australia.

It resulted in mass deportation of convicted criminals who had New Zealand citizenship back to New Zealand. Anecdotally, having worked in New Zealand, that policy caused us all sorts of issues in terms of affecting crime rates, and I was just interested in examining the extent to which those assumptions were reflected in data.

Historically, New Zealand and Australia have had an agreement whereby New Zealanders can live and work in Australia without any specific visa. Because of economic conditions, this resulted in a lot of New Zealanders immigrating to Australia, living and working there for most of their lives, and never obtaining Australian citizenship because they don't need it. And because of this agreement, there are significant barriers to actually obtaining citizenship. This resulted in a number of people who would call Australia home being sent back to New Zealand, a country with which they have sort little connection other than being born there.

In terms of the findings, I didn't discern any clear impact on the data from this policy, so it’s difficult to say definitively. But I felt that I hopefully opened up some interesting lines of inquiry for future research.

What have you gone onto since graduating?

I moved down to London. I'm working remotely, and I've returned to working as a lawyer for the firm who I was working for prior to coming to Cambridge. I’m doing criminal prosecution work but doing so remotely for this firm in New Zealand.

I suppose you could say I'm doing solicitor-type work for criminal prosecutions. In the UK legal profession, you have a split bar, which essentially means that you can be a solicitor or a barrister.

Solicitors are the ones who generally prepare legal arguments and do groundwork, and the barristers are the ones that stand up in the courtroom and present those legal arguments or evidence to either the judge or a jury. In New Zealand, we don't have a split bar, so every lawyer will do bits of both work and operating in the criminal sphere.

But here in the UK, because I'm working remotely, my work is confined to that which would more traditionally be done by solicitors, even though we don't maintain that division in New Zealand.

Can you give some examples of how you have used learning from the course in your career?

It's definitely given me a fresh perspective. I was already working as a trained lawyer, and I did this course I suppose out of academic interest rather than to necessarily upskill myself.

But certainly, it was a success insofar as it gave me the opportunity to step back and think about things in a in a different way. And I like to think that I have carried forward some lessons, particularly in terms of what I learned about the more philosophical aspects of criminology, and just how we can justify the workings of the system.

Prior to my studies, I had viewed punishment in the criminal justice system as something which can only be justified by traditional sentencing principles like preventing future harm, because that's often how it's spoken about in in the law.

But reflecting on things more philosophically, I came to find myself considering that there can be more than one justification happening at once, and I found it difficult to exclude that in certain cases.

This is an aspect which can be difficult to wrap your head around, but I think at the same time impossible to exclude in certain cases. It definitely gives me a lot of food for thought and will continue to do so.

What was the most important thing criminology taught you?

I've probably been alluding to it, not very well. I think it taught me the value of just pausing and reflecting. Give yourself the time to step out of your day-to-day and just reflect on the significance of it all.

What would you say to somebody who was going to study Criminology?

Just to enjoy it, I suppose.

I think that advice from me is probably a result of my own circumstances, where I was fortunate enough to come to study, established in a career which I loved. But I think there's still some value in just making sure you take your time to really appreciate everything Cambridge has to offer, inside and outside of the classroom. Because it's such a wonderful place and opportunity, which certainly flew by for me. But I feel that I was lucky enough to be able to take it at that pace and focus on enjoying it rather than the result of it.

Is there anything you would like to have known about Cambridge when you started?

I don't think so. I felt the information that we were given as prospective students was sound. My college was very welcoming and just made it all very easy for us, so there were certainly no unpleasant surprises.

And I think for me personally, I quite enjoyed just diving into the unknown a bit. So, I suppose no would be the short answer.

2 January 2025