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University of Glasgow research on desistance from crime and reintegration has contributed powerfully to a paradigm shift in approaches to offender rehabilitation, resulting in significant reforms of penal policy and practice. By fostering and sustaining relationships with criminal justice policymakers and stakeholders, the researchers catalysed a number of meaningful impacts. These included significant shifts in rehabilitation policy in all three UK jurisdictions; the delivery of a new practice skills model by the National Offender Management Service of England and Wales, and the ongoing redesign of service provision and prison staff training in Scotland and Northern Ireland. More broadly, the research has challenged conventional wisdom around approaches to `offender management', effecting a widespread cultural change in the penal system.
PADS+ casts light on the causal mechanisms for crime, highlighting how the interaction between people and settings leads to acts of crime. As a result PADS+ has advanced the scientific basis on which policing and criminal justice strategy and crime prevention policies can be formulated in the UK and abroad. Three types of impact are claimed: (1) initiating a move away from a broad-brush risk factor approach to the explanation and prevention of crime towards a focus on key causal factors and mechanisms; (2) being recognized and utilized by policy makers; (3) contributing to social science education nationally and internationally.
Research by the Social and Spatial Inequalities (SASI) research group, led by Prof Danny Dorling, has for more than a decade been at the forefront of analysis and visualisation of social inequalities. SASI's research is global in scope and focuses on the statistical analysis of trends, causes and consequences of inequality and on methodological innovations in the effective visualisation and communication of those inequalities. Reaching beyond the academic community to effect real change in society is a core objective for the SASI group, leading to significant impacts in three different ways:
This case study describes the international impact of research carried out by Swansea criminologists in partnership with criminal justice agencies in the Channel Island of Jersey. This has included work on risk and need assessment and, in a linked study, on supervision skills used by probation staff. This research has a documented impact with international reach, mainly since 2008, affecting policy and practice in Jersey, Scotland, the Irish Republic, the Isle of Man, Malta, Sweden and Denmark, and (in relation to the skills study only) England and Wales, and has attracted interest in the USA, Australia and Portugal. Its significance lies mainly in the fact that the risk and need assessment study has led to structured and evidence-based assessment of (currently) about 15,000 offenders per year, or about 45,000 to date, in jurisdictions where no structured assessment methods were previously used. About 35,000 of these represent impact since the start of 2008. In addition, the study of supervision skills has contributed since 2008 to the measurement and development of skills in offender supervision in England, Wales, Scotland and Jersey. The research has also been used extensively by a training and consultancy company and contributed to the establishment and growth of the research and practice development network CREDOS (Collaboration of Researchers for the Effective Development of Offender Supervision).
The research has influenced governments' policy and professional practice in the development of Restorative Justice (RJ) both nationally and internationally, through its evaluation of the effectiveness of RJ schemes in promoting rehabilitation of adult offenders while also considering the views of victims. Policy makers and practitioners have drawn on the research evidence specifically as regards the relative merits of two types of RJ intervention: `conferencing' involving a meeting of victim and offender with their supporters and with a neutral facilitator; and `indirect mediation' involving `shuttling' on the part of the mediator between victim and offender. The research has played a major part in the Ministry of Justice's commissioning of sentencing options in England and Wales, and has directly informed legislation implementing RJ (the Crime and Courts Act 2013).
The criminology research team at the John Grieve Centre (JGC) provides a critical perspective on a series of social problems, evaluating our understanding of their definition and threat as well as providing novel empirical research into understanding their threat. Since 2008, the submitting team have made a significant contribution academically, with series of highly rated traditional academic publications and important empirical studies for a range of funders. Our key theme is the contextualising and redefining the key threats from `gangs', `organised crime', `terrorists' in order to inform and challenge professionals involved in their policing. The second argument for the inclusion of `gangs' through to `organised crime' and `terrorism' is justified by the way the identities of those involved can overlap and their offending careers can span all three types of crime.
Our key impacts are:
There is a strong tradition of qualitative research with children and young people at The University of Northampton. The Centre for Children and Youth (CCY) was constituted in 1997 and has completed fifty research projects funded by RCUK, national agencies and charities, and Local Authorities and service-providers. This case study focuses upon CCY's research on children and young people's participation in decision-making. This work has produced regional, national and international impacts: our evidence-based guidance has been influential and widely-employed within a broad, international shift towards the involvement of children and young people in decision-making in diverse educational, planning and policy contexts. In particular, this case study evidences CCY's transformative impacts upon the design of spaces for children and young people in educational and urban planning settings.
The Stonehenge Riverside Project was carried out between 2003 and 2010, to determine the purpose of Stonehenge by investigating both the monument and the surrounding landscape. The project's reach and importance have been considerable, from training and inspiring the next generation of professional archaeologists to stimulating people worldwide with new knowledge about Stonehenge, providing artistic inspiration and changing perceptions and beliefs about the use of the site, leading to significant economic, cultural and technological benefits.
The online, fully searchable edition of the Old Bailey Proceedings has been consulted during the assessment period by over 3.5 million unique users, including genealogists, non-academic historians, and students across dozens of countries, reaching millions more through the TV and radio programmes it inspired. It has enriched the cultural lives of individuals and enhanced the educational experience of university students across the world. Users have deepened their understandings of their personal ancestors and of the societies in which they lived, and have been stimulated to conduct their own research and write their own histories. Those interested in the law have developed an appreciation of the historical evolution of the criminal trial and the importance of the public dissemination of accounts of legal proceedings. The innovative and interactive method of presenting history online has been replicated in subsequent publically available online resources, including London Lives, 1690-1800, created by the same project team.
Federico Varese`s research has redirected thinking on the (mainly local) nature of organized crime. Varese has shown that a significant factor accounting for the spread of organized crime is the efforts of individuals to escape arrest in their home country. His research, as well as his role on the Strategic Review (2010), has made substantial contributions to the restructuring of the UK`s Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA). In Italy and Canada, he has helped to shape and inform policy debates within the Anti-Mafia Commission, and Public Safety Canada, respectively. His work has also been cited as being "particularly relevant" by prosecutors in Italy. More specifically, Varese`s use of quantitative methods to analyze the transcripts of wiretaps has inspired Europol to organize the training of police and prosecutors in these methods, and to alter their approach to better combat organized crime.