Criminology, broadly understood to encompass scholarship on crime and the labelling and enforcement processes which produce the social definition of crime, has had a long and distinguished tradition at LSE. Dating back to the appointment of Herman Mannheim in 1935 as an honorary part-time lecturer in criminology, followed by his appointment to the first readership in criminology in the UK in 1946, LSE’s criminological tradition spans not only the Law School but the Departments of Sociology, Social Policy and Methodology. Mannheim’s work was foundational to the understanding of the relationships of sociology to criminal science and penology in its legal setting at a time when the scientific study of crime and the criminal was in its infancy.
LSE has been lucky to include many of the key figures in amongst its members: the late Stan Cohen and Terry Morris as well as the still very active Professors David Downes, Paul Rock, Robert Reiner and Meredith Rossner (now at ANU).
Current criminological research in the Law School include work on race and criminal justice, policing practice and human rights, the ethnographic analysis of urban order, decision-making in mental health contexts and the comparative political economy of crime and punishment. Hub members are actively engaged in the interdisciplinary Mannheim Centre for Criminology. Professor Nicola Lacey’s work also has an interdisciplinary focus, exploring the boundaries of criminal law and criminology, for example in her recent working paper on 'Criminal Justice and Social (In)Justice' and her chapter in the latest edition of the Oxford Handbook of Criminology co-authored with Lucia Zedner.
Richard Martin’s principal research focus is the relationship between law, regulation and policing. His recent book, Policing Human Rights: Law, Narratives and Practice (OUP: 2021), explores how human rights law functions in modern policing, exposing the visions and values officers’ express in their daily narratives, sensemaking and practices. Richard is returning to issues of law and policing in his current project, which is a mixed-methods study of the impact of the statutory reform of pre-charge bail since 2017, drawing on empirical work with a large police force in England. Richard also has an ongoing interest in power, legitimacy, and compliance in the criminal justice system. Richard convenes the LLB half-unit, ‘Topics in Sentencing and Criminal Justice’.