Our Co-Director Professor Adam Crawford has today received the British Society of Criminology’s Outstanding Achievement Award at its 2026 annual conference. Read his acceptance speech below.
Published 8 July 2026.
Despite some challenges, 2026 has been a good year for me. It started on the 2nd January with the birth of my first grandson – Sebastian Adam to my eldest daughter – then Arsenal won the premiership after 22 long years and many false dawns; now this award for which I am honoured, slightly embarrassed about receiving and most grateful – especially for the kind words already spoken. It is really quite humbling.
How I got into criminology and who I owe for that fate…
Like any good Oscars ceremony, I need to start with some acknowledgements of the personal debt I owe to those from whom I have learnt so much and those who (perhaps inadvertently) drew me into the study of crime, deviance and social control. Like most, if I have ever achieved anything that deserves the accolade of ‘outstanding’ it is simply because I have been standing on the shoulders of others and working with great colleagues.
- Among the rollcall of the former, I have learnt from and engaged with: EP Thompson, Stuart Hall, Carol Smart, Jock Young, Stan Cohen, Clifford Shearing, John Braithwaite and Zygmunt Bauman to name but a few. Unfortunately, many are no longer with us, but their legacies for our discipline remain.
- Among the long list of collaborators, co-authors and colleagues I include: Stuart Lister, Tim Newburn, David Wall, Joanna Shapland, Kate Brown, David Churchill, Sam Lewis, Ben Bradford, all the team that worked on establishing the N8 Policing Research Partnership with me, including the always supportive Sandra Walklate, and all the many Co-Investigators and researchers at the Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre, and last but not least, the wonderful Anna Barker.
Such an award prompts a degree of self-reflection: Why did I do what I’ve done? What has animated me? And what – if anything – did I achieve?
From the outset, I’ve always been interested in things at the margins, the possibilities of traversing boundaries and what happens when you erode established borders. Hence, I have always been attracted to inter- or trans-disciplinary studies. This led me to study both law and sociology as a joint degree, as my intellectual starting base, at the University of Warwick (the only place to offer such a degree at the time).
Studying Law and Sociology in the early/mid-1980s in the midlands drew me further into my interest in crime, harm and disorder, as this was the period of Thatcherism, urban unrest and industrial dispute, most notably the Miners’ Strike of 1984/5. During this time the use of criminalisation and the power of state coercion to manage and suppress political dissent, urban disorder and industrial relations seemed so stark, oppressive and yet also deeply intriguing in ways that pricked my curiosity as well as my political ardour. This sowed the seed of my subsequent interest in criminology.
I was very fortunate to receive an ESRC scholarship to Cambridge University to study the MPhil Criminology at the Institute, where I was exposed to some great minds and ideas – Tony Bottoms, Maureen Cain and Colin Sumner in particular. It was a very different environment from the functionalist and brutalist buildings of Warwick, to find myself in beautiful, crenelated Cambridge colleges steeped in medieval history. It all took some getting used to, and yet a year is not a long time in which to do so!
In those early years I was massively influenced by the wonderful social histories of EP Thompson, who I had the pleasure to meet on numerous occasions. Despite the use of the law as an instrument of oppression and to reinforce social inequalities, that he documented so vividly in relation to 18th and 19th century England, Thompson held fast to the notion that the rule of law is ‘an unqualified human good’ (1975: 266), albeit premised on a ‘bloody minded’ distrust of the state. I still think he is one of the most important British thinkers of the twentieth century and a wonderful and generous man. I was also heavily influenced by another intellectual titan at the time, Stuart Hall, who I also had the pleasure to meet and listen to, including a memorable lecture he gave at Cambridge University in which he embraced the ‘eclecticism of theory’. At the time this rubbed against my rather dogmatic post-structuralist inclinations but subsequently it has come to haunt and inform my thoughts and work ever since.
The first academic job that I got, in 1987, was on the Second Islington Crime Survey (Crawford et al. 1990) as a researcher at Middlesex Polytechnic working with Jock Young, John Lea, Roger Matthews and colleagues. So, by association and to a degree by choice, I became drawn into Left Realism at the height of its influence in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Influenced by that legacy, my PhD was a study of multi-agency partnership relations between various service providers including the police, local government and civil society organisations engaged in community safety work in the 1990s. This was a time when partnerships between the police and other health and social care providers were embryonic in the UK and before a statutory duty was introduced via the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 which formalised such community safety arrangements. The PhD was subsequently published (in 1997) as a monograph by Oxford University Press entitled The Local Governance of Crime. Many of the issues and challenges that were evident in delivering urban safety through collaborations identified therein remain stubbornly true today (Crawford, et al. 2023).
What unites my subsequent research work across four decades?
Despite those early beginnings, I think it is true to say that I have always been something of a reluctant criminologist, more interested in the mundane nature of social (dis)order than spectacular representations of crime and punishment. There are a few recurring themes that have continued to inform my work.
First, recognition of the uneven spatial and social concentration of victimization, social disadvantage, vulnerability and harm. Crime compounds other social ills and forms of deprivation. Any focus on crime necessitates an accompanying focus on inequality and the unequal distribution of power across society.
Second, allied to this is the acknowledgement that crime – despite its decidedly political character, frequently deployed as a means of preserving wealth differentials, defending private property and shoring up powerful interests through the institutions of police, prosecution and punishment – is not a proto-revolutionary activity to be romanticized like latter-day Robin Hoods, but is largely harmful, most adversely affecting those already most marginalized and compounding or intersecting with other forms of disadvantage and vulnerability.
Third, the harm that arises from lived experiences of crime and victimisation demands action in the here-and-now and thus pragmatic engagement with the very structures and institutions that can also serve to perpetuate harm. The state and police – at least in the UK and most of Europe – not only produce and compound extant vulnerabilities and harm but also can serve to mitigate and reduce these. The state (and the law) is the ultimate power-container of last resort and as an inhibition on arbitrary power, invested with the public good and must continually be held to account against such aspirations and values.
As an aside, there was a wonderful pamphlet first published in 1979 by the superbly titled London-Edinburgh Weekend Return Group, called In and Against the State (1980), which well captured this paradox and invocation to an ethic of praxis. Social structures like the criminal justice system and police are both a resource for actors to make sense of their actions and a product of that action. For me, this prompts ethical questions not merely about knowledge production but about how knowledge and ideas are mobilised and used, as well as what researchers value and how they assume responsibility for their interventions in ways that combine problem-raising and problem-solving.
Fourth, by contrast, the levers and causes of crime lie far from the traditional reach of the criminal justice system and state agencies. As Braithwaite reminds us, most people most of the time do not commit crime not primarily because the law or a judge tells them not to do so, but rather due to legitimate forces of compliance as well as the approbation and levers of parochial social control that are enmeshed in multiple relationships of interdependency, care, family, kinship and community. Importantly, the police and legal authorities are called upon to manage social order, but they do not and cannot create it in the first place. Order is fostered and sustained by much wider processes, institutions, social norms and values. Thus, there can be no single state-directed (command-and-control type) agency solution to crime, given its complex, multi-faceted causes and effects. This reinforces the marginality of law and legal authorities in most people’s lives and the importance of informal social control processes and relationships. However, these can be both inclusionary and exclusionary. As I noted at the end of the penultimate chapter in my first book: ‘An assertion of “community” identity at a local level can be beautifully conciliatory, socially nuanced, and constructive but it can also be parochial, intolerant, oppressive, and unjust’ (Crawford 1997: 294).
From the outset I was also interested in the ways in which ideas and practices ‘travel’ across jurisdictions and the ways in which social and legal cultures shape resultant practices and the lived experiences of justice. Moreover, I strongly believe that through comparative studies we can learn to see ourselves through the eyes of others, in ways that challenge many of our own taken for granted assumptions. In fact, my first ever ESRC grant was a study of victim-offender mediation (or médiation pénal as the French referred to it) in both England and France, which enabled me to live and work for periods of time in Lyon and Paris (Crawford 2000) – where I forged many long-standing relations with French criminologists (although they tended not to talk of criminology in such ways), like Philippe Robert, René Levi, Jacques Donzelot, Sebastian Roché and Jacques de Maillard.
The reluctant criminologist
I have always believed strongly that criminology is – as David Downes termed it – ‘a rendezvous discipline’. One that serves as an intellectual cross-roads, where other disciplines intersect, meet and (sometimes) go their own ways. Criminology’s vitality and intellectual interest is – I would argue – largely because of this position on the busy crossroads of sociology, psychology, law, philosophy, history, etc. Criminology cannot exist separately from social theory; it is inevitably concerned with the central problems of social order and disorder. Although I might suggest that instead of a crossroads, maybe a Bedouin tent that is welcoming to outsiders and hosts weary travellers might be a better analogy.
Many of the people that influenced me came to criminology in a somewhat ambivalent manner – and often left for other fields – Carol Smart, Stuart Hall, Stan Cohen – but certainly left their mark on the discipline. For me, criminology is better for being open with porous boundaries rather than sealed behind its own disciplinary walls.
As something of a reluctant criminologist myself…
I was ambivalent about establishing an undergraduate criminology programme at Leeds some thirty years ago. This was in part because of concerns about the narrowness of the programme – which originally was conceived as a joint endeavour between the Law School and the School of Sociology and Social Policy, to which Carol Smart, by then my colleague at Leeds, was to contribute. However, over time, first, the School of Sociology lost interest (rather myopically) and, second, the first year became less foundational of sociology and law (with a bit of psychology) and increasingly filled with crime related courses – often at the behest of both students and staff. However, the BA did enable us to expand and employ wonderful new colleagues, some of whom are here tonight.
I also pride myself and the University of Leeds (where I have now been for nearly 34 years) that the colleagues we have subsequently recruited into what when I arrived was a very traditional law school, include colleagues from history, computer science, data analytics, sociology, social policy, law to name just a few of the disciplines… We have erected something of a Bedouin tent – officially called the Liberty Building – on the peripheries of the University of Leeds.
As a member of the Law REF panel in 2014 and 2021 – carrying a heavy burden of responsibility, having been nominated by the BSC, and working closely with colleagues from Social Policy and Social Work (Lorraine Gelsthorpe, Tim Newburn and others) and Sociology (Eamon Carrabine and colleagues), I argued strongly that criminology should not be its own sub-panel, but rather that we should work across sub-panels to put in place processes and oversight to ensure that criminological outputs and impacts were well regarded, fairly treated and welcomed by all three sub-panels. This we did through processes of cross-panel working, calibration and collaboration. I am pleased to see that criminology remains well represented across all three REF 2029 sub-panels and I am confident that on the Law panel criminology is in safe hands with the likes of Kieran McEvoy, Jackie Hodgson and Clare McGlynn.
Collaboration and infrastructure building
Looking back, however, I think that one of the most defining elements of my work over the last decade and a half in particular has been my commitment and contribution to building research collaborations and infrastructures that benefit colleagues – mostly but not exclusively criminologists.
I have done this…
- via the Leeds Social Sciences Institute as an interdisciplinary hub supporting research development, impact and PhD training;
- via the ESRC White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership with Sheffield, Leeds and York supporting PhD training and supervision.
- Across the N8 universities in the north of England – establishing and becoming the inaugural Director of the N8 Policing Research Partnership – in 2013 – supported by a HEFCE Catalyst grant for five years 2015-2020.
- And most recently, the ESRC Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre – the first criminology lead ESRC research centre secured in open competition – hosted by Leeds and York which explains why I am employed by two institutions – I fear I may have taken inter-institutional collaboration too seriously and ended up with two institutional masters.
To me these have all constituted to some degree or other scaffolding that provides structure, support and resources upon which others – notably early career researchers – can fashion their own research ambitions. It is with great pride that I read the great work that has been produced by criminologists who have benefited from, for example:
- The N8 PRP Small Grants scheme that we pioneered;
- The VPRC Early Career Development Grants; and
- The Translational Fellowships that have enabled practitioners to pursue long-held research goals through VPRC.
What unites all these endeavours has also been an openness to genuine co-production that combines the socially dispersed knowledge that lies far from the ivory towers of academia. But like collaboration, co-production is neither easy nor straightforward and much that passes under its name is tokenistic (Crawford 2020). To address the epistemic injustices that are deeply rooted in academia, we need to rethink and reimagine knowledge production that is genuinely ‘socially distributed, trans-disciplinary, application-oriented and subject to multiple accountabilities’ (Gibbons, et al. 1994).
My fears for the future
The current state of Higher Education in the UK is not a healthy one and the funding model appears genuinely broken. The casualisation, insecurity and precarity of employment in universities is deeply concerning. It is resulting in many great and aspiring academics to leave the profession. This is exacerbated by the exceedingly poor quality of too much senior management within universities of all kinds. Managers, who espouse high-minded values of inclusion, integrity, collegiality, compassion and professionalism, all too readily act in ways contrary to these. I have seen too many colleagues treated in ways that fly in the face of any basic tenets or minimum standards of organisational justice.
If the internal institutional climate is depressing, so too is the external research funding landscape. The last year has seen a decided politicisation of research funding, within UKRI in particular, like never before (at least during my career). It is ironic, yet deeply troubling that it has come under a Labour government. But maybe that has made it all the more palatable for those who have embraced and extolled it.
My biggest concern for the future, however, is that the defining, yet silent and fragile golden thread that holds so much that is good about academia together – namely collegiality – is being both slowly eroded and actively undermined by what is going on in University management today.
And yet, in the early career academics that we have nurtured and supported through the Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre and that I encounter at BSC and other conferences, it is clear to me that there is a new generation of scholars who are deeply engaged researchers, committed to academic values of integrity, ethical practice, holding power to account and the inclusion of the marginalised voices of people with lived experience of the harms of crime and criminal justice as well as a clear sense of collaboration and collegiality in the face of countervailing pressures. That provides a beacon of light in dark times.
- Crawford, A. (1997) The Local Governance of Crime: Appeals to community and partnerships. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Crawford, A. (2020) ‘Effecting Change in Policing Through Police/Academic Partnerships: The Challenges of (and for) Co-production’, in N. Fielding, K. Bullock and S. Holdaway (eds) Critical Reflections on Evidence-Based Policing, London: Routledge, pp. 175-197.
- Crawford, A., Jones, T., Woodhouse, T. and Young, J. (1990) The Second Islington Crime Survey. Enfield: Centre for Criminology, Middlesex University.
- Crawford, A., Donkin, S. and Weirich, C.A. (2023) ‘Crime Prevention as Urban Security’, in A. Liebling, S. Maruna and L. McAra (eds) Oxford Handbook of Criminology (7th Edition), Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 585-606.
- Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P. and Trow, M. (1994) The New Production of Knowledge, London: Sage.
- London-Edinburgh Weekend Return Group (1980) In and against the state. London: Pluto Press.
- Thompson, E.P. (1975) Whigs and Hunters: The origins of the Black Act. London, Penguin Books