Phil Scraton

Phil Scraton (born 3 May 1949) is a critical criminologist, academic and author.

Phil Scraton was born in 1949 in Wallasey, Wirral, Cheshire (now Merseyside)) and moved to Liverpool in the late 1960s. Brought up a Roman Catholic he attended Sacred Heart Primary School, Moreton and was a seminarian at Ushaw College, Durham 1962-1968. Soon after leaving the seminary he rejected religion. Completing school at Wallasey College of FE, he studied Sociology at the University of Liverpool, gaining a BA and an MA by research. His Masters thesis "Images of Deviance and Politics of Assimilation" examined State institutionalised racism against the Irish Travelling community in Liverpool. His doctoral thesis "Unreasonable Force: Class, Marginality and the Political Autonomy of the Police" was awarded by Lancaster University and focused on policing in the context of the United Kingdom's inner city disturbances in the early 1980s and the 1984/85 Coal Dispute.

A qualified teacher, he holds an Advanced Diploma in Outdoor Education.

He is author/ editor of ′I Am Sir, You Are A Number': Report of the Independent Panel of Inquiry into the Circumstances of the H-Block and Armagh Prison Protests 1976-1981 (Coiste na nIarchimí, 2020) https://www.statewatch.org/media/1396/ni-report-inquiry-h-block-armagh-prison-protests-10-20.pdf and co-author, with Gillian McNaull, of Death Investigation, Coroners' Inquests and the Rights of the Bereaved (Irish Council for Civil Liberties, 2021) https://www.iccl.ie/report/iccl-report-on-the-coroners-system/

In 2021, with Dr Maeve O'Rourke and Deirdre Mahon he was appointed to the three person Truth Recovery Design Panel to work with survivors and victims of Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in Northern Ireland.

Their extensive report, Truth, Acknowledgement and Accountability (Report for the NI Executive) presented five primary and 87 secondary recommendations, accepted in full by all parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly 30092021-Truth-Recovery-Final-Report-FINAL-Online-Version.pdf (1.978Mb) The recommendations include an independent panel informing a full statutory public inquiry overseen by victims and survivors, supported by an independent research team.

In 1979, Phil Scraton joined the Open University's academic staff as a member of the 'Crime, Justice and Society' course team, contributing also to the Social Sciences' Foundation Course.

In 1984 at Edge Hill College, with Kathryn Chadwick, he established the Centre for Studies in Crime and Social Justice, developing the University's first Masters and Doctoral programmes.

His first book, a co-edited collection with Paul Gordon, was published by Penguin in 1984: Causes for Concern: British criminal justice on trial.

Soon after he edited a special edition of the international Journal of Law and Society entitled: The State v. the People: Lessons from the Coal Dispute (1985).

He is author of The State of the Police (Pluto 1985) and co-author (with Kathryn Chadwick) of In the Arms of the Law: Coroners' Inquests and Deaths in Custody (Pluto 1987) and, with Joe Sim and Paula Skidmore, Prisons Under Protest (Open University Press 1991) and editor of Law, Order and the Authoritarian State (Open University Press 1987).

He is a social researcher, known particularly for his investigative work into the context, circumstances and aftermath of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.

More recently, he was a member of the Hillsborough Independent Panel and headed its research.

Currently he is Professor Emeritus, School of Law at Queen's University Belfast, and formerly Director of the Childhood, Transition and Social Justice Initiative.

His research includes the investigation of and inquiry into controversial deaths, most notably the Hillsborough disaster on 15 April 1989 in which 97 football fans were crushed to death.

He has also researched deaths in custody, the marginalisation and criminalisation of children and young people, the politics of imprisonment, and the analysis of disasters and their impact on the bereaved and survivors.

Promoted to Professor in 1990 he remained Director of the Centre until 2003.

A member of the Young People, Power and Justice collective, he edited its collection Childhood' in 'Crisis? (UCL Press/ Routledge 1997).

He co-authored, with Howard Davis, Beyond Disaster: Identifying and Resolving Inter-Agency Conflict in the Immediate Aftermath of Disasters (HO Emergency Planning Division 1997).

The first edition of Hillsborough: The Truth (Mainstream) was published in 1999 (2nd edn 2000; 3rd edn 2009; 4th edn Penguin/Random House 2016).

In 2000 he was awarded a Nuffield grant to set up a disasters' research archive and to examine the aftermath of disasters and other traumatising events.

In 2001 he and Kathryn Chadwick were awarded an ESRC Seminars Award to hold six two-day seminars on the theme Disasters: Origins, Consequences, Aftermath bringing together researchers, practitioners, campaigners, bereaved and survivors.

In September 2003, he was appointed to a Chair in Criminology in the School of Law at Queen's University, Belfast.

He has held visiting scholarships at the University of Western Sydney, Monash University Melbourne and the University of Sydney.

His research with Linda Moore for the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission into women's imprisonment was published initially by the Commission in two extensive reports, The Hurt Inside (2005) and The Prison Within (2007), followed by the text, The Incarceration of Women: Punishing Bodies, Breaking Spirits (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

He edited special issues of Social Justice: Journal of Crime, Conflict and World Order (with Jude McCulloch 2006) on Deaths in Custody and Detention and Current Issues in Criminal Justice on the criminalisation and punishment of children and young people (2008).

More recently, alongside his work on Hillsborough, he published Power, Conflict and Criminalisation (Routledge, 2007) a book that covers the full range of his critical research.

This was followed by a collection of research writing on prisons, The Violence of Incarceration (Routledge, 2009), co-edited with Jude McCulloch.

With co-researchers Siobhan McAlister and Deena Haydon, he co-authored Childhood in Transition: Experiencing Marginalisation and Conflict in Northern Ireland (Save the Children/ The Prince's Trust, 2009).

He was a member of the "Hillsborough Independent Panel" (2010-2012) and primary author of Hillsborough: The Report of the Independent Panel (2012) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/229038/0581.pdf In 2017 he was awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship to research the project:‘“Justice for the 96”: From Campaign Mantra to Due Process'.

In 2013 he was awarded a Lowenstein Fellowship at Amherst College, Massachusetts.

In 2013, in partnership with Siobhán McAlister, he was awarded ESRC Knowledge Exchange funding for the project Identifying and Challenging the Negative Media Representation of Children and Young People in Northern Ireland.

The project, in collaboration with Include Youth and a range of other children's and young people's rights charitable organisations, appointed Faith Gordon as Research Fellow.

In 2014 he was Visiting Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire and in 2016 at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

He is the all-Ireland representative for the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control.

An initial summary of research findings, Behind the Headlines; Media Representations of Children and Young People in Northern Ireland - The voices and experiences of children and young people was published in April 2015.

His recent research also includes the European funded international comparative project Children of Imprisoned Parents.

In December 2016 he received an honorary Doctor of Laws of the University of Liverpool.

With Linda Moore and Azrini Wahidin he co-edited Women’s Imprisonment and the Case for Abolition (Routledge, 2017).

In July 2018 he was awarded honorary doctorates by Edge Hill University (Honorary Doctor of Philosophy, HonDPhil), and Lancaster University.