Tim Newburn is Professor of Criminology and Social Policy at the London School of Economics & Political Science, and is Official Historian of Criminal Justice. Prior to joining LSE, he was Director of the Public Policy Research Unit at Goldsmiths College from 1997, having previously worked at the Policy Studies Institute, the National Institute for Social Work, the Home Office and Leicester University. He is the author or editor of nearly 40 books, including: Permission and Regulation: Law and Morals in Post-war Britain (Routledge, 1991); The Future of Policng (with Morgan, Oxford University Press, 1997); Private Security and Public Policing (with Jones, Clarendon Press, 1998); Policy Transfer and Criminal Justice (with Jones, Open University Press, 2007); and, Criminology (2nd ed, Routledge, 2012). 

Tim Newburn was President of the British Society of Criminology (2005-08) and Director of the Mannheim Centre for Criminology at the LSE (2003-08) and was elected to the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences in 2005. His current work is dominated by two projects. First, the research and writing (with Professors Paul Rock and David Downes) of the Official History of Criminal Justice, a study commissioned by government and announced in parliament by the Prime Minister. The study, based on government records and interviews with key participants, focuses on criminal justice and penal policy (from policing, through courts, sentencing and prisons) from the late 1950s to the late 1990s.

Second, together with Paul Lewis of the Guardian newspaper, Tim is writing a book based on their collaborative project, Reading the Riots. The study was a unique collaboration between a news organization and a university, established in the immediate aftermath of the 2011 English riots. Conducted at huge speed, and published entirely via the newspaper and film and television, the project was shortlisted for the Times Higher Education’s ‘Research Project of the Year’ prize and won the ‘Innovation of the Year’ prize at the European Press Awards, both in 2012.