News

Women’s open prisons in England and Wales are struggling to fulfil their function as sites of resettlement, due to an increasing number of prisoners on short sentences. This was the conclusion drawn by Daria Przybylska, a PhD student at the Prisons Research Centre, in her latest article in the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies’ Prison Service Jo…

A new open-access book by Professor Ben Crewe aims to excavate the ‘social and emotional texture’ of life in close supervision centres - the most restrictive and controlled units in the England and Wales prison system.‘Deep Confinement: Everyday Imprisonment and Extremity in the Close Supervision Centres’ documents Crewe’s unprecedented access to t…

Doctoral workshop unites Cambridge researchers from across disciplines to discuss gender-focused research, emphasising the role of evidence-based fieldwork.On 13 July, the Justice and Society Research Centre hosted their Theory and Methods Workshop titled ‘Researching gender-based vulnerabilities: narratives of precarities and resistance from the f…

A policing workshop on 16 to 17 April allowed attendees to experience the difficulties faced by police officers, using virtual reality (VR) technology, while also laying the groundwork for a much larger research project on public trust in the police.The workshop was led by Gabriela Roman, an Assistant Research Professor at the Institute of Criminol…

From 13-16 July, the Institute of Criminology hosted the 2026 Evidence-Based Policing Conference at the Faculty of Law, chaired by Professor Barak Ariel.The conference theme, ‘Beyond Borders: Evidence-Led Solutions for Global Crime and Policing Challenges’, was chosen to reflect the growing international importance of evidence-based approaches to c…

It is with great sadness that we mark the passing of Professor Andreas von Hirsch, one of the most influential criminological thinkers of his generation and a figure whose work shaped international debates on penal theory and criminal justice ethics.For more than three decades, Andreas played a central role in the intellectual life of the Universit…

The report published today, titled ‘Desistance After Imprisonment Abroad’, is the result of collaborative research by Drs Caroline Lanskey and Angelique Mulholland, with the human rights and welfare charity, Prisoners Abroad. In the largest UK study of its kind, the researchers set out to explore the resettlement and desistance experiences of Briti…

Parole is supposed to ask a hard, practical question: has a person serving a life sentence reached the point where release can be responsibly considered?New research by PhD student Karan Tripathi and Netanel Dagan, Senior Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, shows that this decision can carry a much wider burden. Their article, published…

 On July 1, the Prison Research Centre and the Radzinowicz Library were delighted to host a joint Institute event with Andy West, writer, philosopher, and teacher of philosophy in HMP Grendon Spring Hill. Andy joined colleagues, students, and visitors for a seminar reflecting on his bestselling memoir 'The Life Inside' and its BBC adaptation, 'Wait…

When people leave prison, the first days and weeks after release are often described as a fresh start. But new research by Dr Helen Kosc suggests that, for many prison-leavers, release is not experienced as a clean break from custody. Instead, it is a compressed and often unforgiving period of appointments, deadlines, conditions, delays and uncerta…

As part of an ongoing inquiry into claims of misconduct related to the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) and construction industry in Australia, Prof Campana and long-term collaborator Prof Federico Varese were asked to review material presented during proceedings and determine whether they believed the CFMEU operated as a…

 PhD student Cheryl Peng believes that psychopathy can play an important role in risk assessment. But in China, she says, there is no common equivalent term. Her research aims to address this gap by studying how psychopathy may look different across cultures. She is developing a new psychometric tool to measure psychopathic traits in Chinese popula…

Youth violence is not just an individual problem — it is a network problem. A new analysis from the Violence Research Centre mapped co-offender data from more than 200,000 UK police records. The findings reveal that adolescents aged 10-18 embedded in criminal networks are more likely to carry knives and commit violent crime, as well as become victi…

 The Institute’s 2026 PhD Conference took place on 28-29 April, on the subject of ‘Critical Crossroads? A criminology that confronts’.Over two days, 49 PhD students from both Cambridge and other institutions gave presentations and took part in panel discussions about how criminologists could approach issues such as displacement, colonialism, violen…

PhD student Noëlle Demole is currently completing her research project on sex trafficking of women in Europe. For her, this research project is one part of a much wider interest in women’s health and safety, which has guided her throughout her career. “I’ve been interested, ever since I was young, in talking with vulnerable people,” says Demole, wh…