About
87
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Introduction
Since the late 1990s, I have been involved in and led numerous independent research studies examining the operation and outcomes of interventions delivered at all stages of the criminal justice process: from policing and the courts, to work undertaken in youth justice, probation and prison settings. My research has been commissioned by a range of funders, including central and local government, law enforcement agencies, charitable trusts and international bodies.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
January 2018 - October 2018
Home Office
Position
- Senior Research Officer
Description
- Responsible for overseeing the commissioning and delivery of research and evaluation on aspects of the UK Government's counter-extremism strategy. This included work by the Office of Security and Counter Terrorism on local and national counter-extremism campaigns, and activity by Home Office Strategic Communications on female genital mutilation, forced marriage and hate crime.
October 2016 - December 2017
Position
- Senior Lecturer
Description
- Taught on nine UG and PG modules, acting as module leader for four. Supervised over 35 UG and PG dissertations. Acted as second supervisor for two PhD students and reviewer/examiner of three others. Programme leader for BA Criminology (Youth Justice).
February 2015 - October 2016
HM Inspectorate of Prisons
Position
- Senior Researcher
Description
- Led on survey methods and quantitative research. Part of a team which inspected over 100 places of detention including 60+ prisons, all young offender institutions and secure training centres, and facilities associated with immigration removal.
Education
August 2009 - August 2013
Publications
Publications (87)
URL: https://youtu.be/vzviSYCM3-E
Objectives
The social and economic costs associated with serious and organised crime (SOC) are considerable: recently estimated by the National Audit Office to be £37 billion annually. Despite this, we know little about the extent and nature of SOC being prosecuted before the courts, or the outcomes associated with these cases. Methods
Secondary an...
The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) is a charity with a mission that matters. We exist to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence. We do this by finding out what works and building a movement to put this knowledge into practice. Children and young people at risk of becoming involved in violence deserve services that give them the...
The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) is a charity with a mission that matters. We exist to prevent children and young people from becoming involved in violence. We do this by finding out what works and building a movement to put this knowledge into practice. Children and young people at risk of becoming involved in violence deserve services that give the...
The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) is a charity with a mission that matters. We exist to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence. We do this by finding out what works and building a movement to put this knowledge into practice. Children and young people at risk of becoming involved in violence deserve services that give them the...
The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) is a charity with a mission that matters. We exist to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence. We do this by finding out what works and building a movement to put this knowledge into practice. Children and young people at risk of becoming involved in violence deserve services that give them the...
Aims
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a demand for vaccines, cures, and the need of related documentation for travel, work and other purposes. Our project aimed to identify the illicit availability of such products across the Dark Web Markets (DWMs).
Methods
A retrospective search for COVID-19 related products was carried out across 118 DWMs since...
This Data Insight presents further findings from an exploratory study undertaken as part of an inaugural Data First Research Fellowship. Drawing on over 12.6 million linked records from the criminal courts and prison system over an eight-year period (2013-2020), it overviews the main findings and implications of a unique study examining the extent,...
Background:
In a time of unprecedented global change, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge in demand of COVID-19 vaccines and related certifications. Mainly due to supply shortages, counterfeit vaccines, fake documentation, and alleged cures to illegal portfolios, have been offered on darkweb marketplaces (DWMs) with important public health co...
Fraud accounts for a growing proportion of UK crime, causing economic losses, societal and personal harms. While there is a growing body of literature on the scale and prevalence of fraud, little research has been undertaken about those who carry out the crime-the offenders-since seminal studies undertaken in the 1970s and 80s. This study reports o...
This Data Insight examines serious organised crime cases appearing before the Crown Court in England and Wales between 2013 and 2020. It was developed as part of the inaugural Data First Research Fellowship using de-identified, research-ready datasets made available through the Data First programme : a ground-breaking data-linkage initiative, led b...
Background
In an age of global insecurity, highly potent synthetic drugs have become a major public health issue. Their online advertisement and sale are facilitated by surface web, darknet markets and social media fuelling substance abuse and addiction, as well as various types of new criminal activities and their growth in sophistication. This st...
The public health and community safety challenges associated with the use of illicit drugs have intensified in recent years, with the number of people using illicit drugs increasing globally and rates of fatal drug-related overdose rising considerably, particularly in North America and parts of Western Europe. Yet prevention efforts and treatment p...
This seminar presented evidence from an independent evaluation on the impact of a large-scale drug law enforcement operation by one English police force using data relating to: over one million emergency (‘999’) and non-emergency (‘101’) calls for service; interviews with different stakeholders; and observations (of tasking and co-ordination meetin...
The main questions that the research sought to answer were: How do the characteristics of known organised crime groups (OCGs) involved in fraud-related offences differ from others? Among known OCGs, what factors best predict involvement in organised forms of fraud?
See: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bbm%3A978-3-319-69401-6%2F1.pdf
Aim: Over a 10-year period from 2003, around 1.7 million arrests in England and Wales resulted in the suspect being exposed to mandatory drug testing and assessment processes. These provisions formed part of a wider drug interventions programme costing £1.3 billion. This study sought to assess the impact of compliance with these measures on treatme...
Police diversion is widely utilised as an intervention for minor cannabis offending in Australia. This study compared the cost-effectiveness and outcomes of three kinds of diversions—cautions, expiation and warnings—with the traditional criminal justice system response of charging the offender. A sample of 998 people who had recently had contact wi...
Background:
There is increasing international interest in alternatives to the use of arrest for minor drug offences. While Australia has been at the forefront in the provision of diversionary programs for minor drug offences there remain key gaps in knowledge about the cost-effectiveness of different approaches. Here we set out to assess the cost-...
This article sought to assess what impact exposure to a court-mandated alcohol treatment requirement (ATR) had on offending. Recidivism risk factors were also investigated. The comparative design involved secondary analysis of three linked administrative datasets which focused upon an experimental group of 112 probationers exposed to the ATR and a...
AimsTo estimate the effect on drug misuse treatment completion of a pilot scheme to pay service providers according to rates of recovery.DesignA controlled, quasi-experimental (difference-in-differences) observational study using multi-level random effects logistic regression.SettingDrug misuse treatment providers in all 149 commissioning areas in...
The key questions for the review were: 1. Does compulsory drug testing result in a higher proportion of criminally involved drug users entering and being retained in treatment? 2. Are there changes in levels of self-reported substance use, health and social functioning following exposure to compulsory drug testing? 3. What impact does exposure to c...
This study sought to assess the impact of the pre-sentence Magistrates Early Referral Into Treatment (MERIT) diversion program in New South Wales, Australia on offending in the 12 months following exposure to the intervention. The comparative design involved an experimental group of 1017 defendants who exited the MERIT program in 2008 and a compari...
Unpublished paper prepared for a Dawes Trust funded study steering group. London: ICPR.
This publication presents key findings and summaries of selected reports from the study ‘Further insights into aspects of the EU illicit drugs market’ (Trautmann, Kilmer and Turnbull, forthcoming 2013), which provides an analysis of characteristics and operations of the EU’s illicit drugs market, as called for by the European Commission. This study...
Using a combination of existing and primary data sources, we sought to estimate the impact of opioid substitution treatment (OST), in the form of methadone maintenance treatment (MMT), in contributing towards avoided illicit heroin consumption across four EU Member States. We conservatively estimate that the amount of pure illicit heroin consumed p...
The project was funded for a two-year period via a European Commission 'Prevention of and Fight Against Crime (2008)' action grant. It consisted of a series of four Working Group meetings at which delegates met to share and exchange knowledge, understanding, experiences and good practice in tracing, locating and apprehending absconders and fugitive...
Book synopsis: In 1971, President Richard M. Nixon declared drugs “public enemy number one” and waged the War on Drug after tests on returning Vietnam War veterans revealed alarming levels of heroin use. Spanning two volumes of approximately 450 articles in an A-to-Z format, the encyclopedia explores this controversial war through the lens of varie...
Policies and practices related to the quasi-compulsory treatment (QCT) of substance-dependent offenders are currently implemented in many countries, despite the absence of reliable knowledge about significant predictors of treatment retention. This study aimed to identify such predictors in QCT and voluntary treatment.
Participants were treated in...
11th meeting of the Pompidou Group’s expert forum on criminal justice
Book synopsis: The Handbook on Crime is a comprehensive edited volume that contains analysis and explanation of the nature, extent, patterns and causes of over 40 different forms of crime, in each case drawing attention to key contemporary debates and social and criminal justice responses to them. It also challenges many popular and official concep...
Book synopsis: The issue of 'recovery' has been increasingly prioritised by policymakers in recent years, but the meaning of the concept remains ambiguous. This edited collection brings together the thoughts and experiences of researchers, practitioners and service users from the fields of health, addiction and criminal justice and centres on curre...
This study evaluates quasi-compulsory drug treatment (QCT) arrangements for substance-dependent offenders receiving treatment instead of imprisonment in comparison to voluntary treatment within five European countries.
Participants were interviewed with the European Addiction Severity Index, the ASI-crime module, questions on perception of pressure...
A multi-country, multi-site comparative research study has documented the feasibility of recruiting drug-dependent individuals receiving treatment as an alternative to imprisonment (‘quasi-compulsory’ treatment, in the setting of an experimental group), while comparing them with those receiving treatment in the same therapeutic institutions, on a v...
The ability of the UK criminal justice system to divert drug-dependent offenders into treatment has been enhanced during recent years. Despite the rapid expansion of such coercive measures, research findings to date are equivocal about their impact. This article draws on qualitative data from in-depth interviews with professionals and those mandate...
This article contributes to the literature on drug users, victimization and offending using data on 545 dependent drug users entering treatment in four European countries. Members of the sample were exposed to high levels of criminal victimization. Sub-groups who were particularly vulnerable to crime were women (and especially sex workers), the hom...
Despite the rapid expansion of options to coerce drug-dependent offenders into treatment—culminating recently in the provisions
of the 2005 Drugs Act and the government's ‘Tough Choices’ agenda—research findings to date are equivocal about their impact
in reducing crime. This paper presents UK findings from a pan-European study on this issue. The r...
This study follows up earlier research on occasional and controlled patterns of heroin use in order to examine how – if at all – this group's use of the drug changed over an extended period of time. The previous study (Occasional and controlled heroin use: not a problem?) revealed that some people felt able to regulate and manage their use of heroi...
This article draws on an evaluation of a large-scale programme in London, ‘From Dependency to Work’ (D2W), to discuss the obstacles to effective work with offenders with multiple needs. D2W, a five-year programme funded through the Single Regeneration Budget, aimed to support offenders with a range of multiple needs including drug dependence, menta...
This paper reports on intake data from Quasi-Compulsory Treatment in Europe, a study of quasi-compulsory treatment (QCT) for drug dependent offenders. It explores the link between formal legal coercion, perceived pressure to be in treatment and motivation amongst a sample of 845 people who entered treatment for drug dependence in five European coun...
The significant investment into developing criminal justice interventions to link drug-using offenders with drug treatment interventions, most specifically in the UK, Australia and North America, has instigated debate about the emphasis given to crime reduction vis-à-vis health and harm reduction for drug users. Key to this debate is the extent to...
The idea of using the legal system to get drug users into treatment tends to polarise debate between those who present it as a solution to drug related crime, and others who see it as an abuse of human rights and of the relationship between client and therapist. In this editorial, we attempt to test these arguments, in the hope of moving the debate...
To describe syringe exchange provision in the United Kingdom.
Two-phase cross-sectional survey: phase I, establishing a sampling frame of syringe exchange coordinators (n=420); phase II, surveying the coordinators seeking data on the number of syringe exchange outlets, visits and syringes distributed during April 1997 (68% response rate).
United Ki...
