Dr Jake Phillips

  • Associate Professor and Director of the MSt Applied Criminology, Penology and Management
Dr Jake Phillips

Contact

About

I joined the Institute in 2025 as Associate Professor and Director of the MSt Applied Penology. Prior to coming to Cambridge, I worked at Sheffield Hallam University for 12 years and before that I undertook my PhD - in Cambridge – which explored practice and culture in the probation service. Before entering academia, I worked in various roles in the community supporting people on probation.

 

I am editor of Probation Journal, an academic journal published by Sage and Napo and was editor of Probation Quarterly, a magazine published for practitioners by the Probation Institute until December 2024. I am Associate Editor for the journal Criminology and Criminal Justice and a member of British Journal of Criminology’s editorial board.

I am the co-chair of the European Society of Criminology's Working Group on Community Sanctions and Measures which comprises over 100 researchers from around the globe who undertake research into all areas of probation and related sanctions. I am on the steering committee for the British Society of Criminology's network on Probation and Community Justice. I am a member of the Independent Probation Professional Register Panel, am on the ARNS expert advisory panel and sit on HMI Probation’s Expert Advisory Group.

Research

I have undertaken research across all areas of the criminal justice system including: prisons, probation, the police, courts and sentencing, youth justice and parole. This research has ranged from interviews with stakeholders and people in prison and on probation, observational research, quantitative methods and creative approaches. I have undertaken in-depth funded research into the emotional labour of probation practice, probation officer well-being, the impact of inspection on probation, how youth offending teams work with young people engaged in knife crime and people who die whilst under probation supervision.

I am currently involved in the following funded studies:

  • Penal Supervision in Comparative Context, funded by the Leverhulme Trust
  • A comparative study of parole oral hearings across remote and in-person settings
  • An evaluation of the youth2adulthood transitions hub in Newham, funded by the Ministry of Justice
  • An exploration of hope in probation, funded by Research England (via the University of Nottingham)

Penal Supervision in Comparative Context

The scale, diversity and intensity of penal supervision (people subject to community sanctions and measures such as probation) has greatly increased in recent years, leading to suggestions that we have entered an era of ‘mass supervision’. Three times as many people are supervised in the community as are imprisoned, yet there have been few in-depth attempts to understand the nature of supervision and its growth. This comparative research will explore supervision in situ across five nations (England, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales). Using innovative methods, the study will generate crucial knowledge about how supervision is experienced, practiced and governed, and the socio-political conditions that influence its forms and its development.

The research will involve interviews, experiential insights from digital ethnography and mobile diaries, policy analysis, and analysis of probation, justice social work and community justice statistics.

Teaching and supervision

I teach on the MSt programme covering methods, academic skills and probation-related topics. I have taught across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes during my career.

I currently PhD students researching: peoples’ experiences of supervision following a sexual offence conviction; a comparative study of penal and asylum policy; the role of probation in the courts.

I am interested in supervising PhD students who wish to undertake PhD research in the field of probation and community sanctions.