Area Academic Contact: Professor Andrew Sanders, Professor of Criminal Law and Criminology, Head of the Birmingham Law School, a.h.l.sanders@bham.ac.uk
Socio-legal studies and criminology are two broad overlapping areas, and work in these areas takes place in several schools in the University.
Research in socio-legal studies is concentrated in the Law School and includes health care law and policy, small claims, and child support. A diverse range of criminological and related work takes place in Psychology, Applied Social Studies, Local Government Studies, and Economics, as well as in the Law School, focusing on topics such as victims of crime, counter-terrorism and local crime prevention. Emerging themes across many current scholars in the University include community justice, victims of crime and the relationship between regulation and other forms of legal control.
Several research groupings are worthy of note:
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Institute of Judicial Administration (IJA) (Director: Marianne Wade) has a long tradition of work in criminal justice, including plea bargaining, jury trials, prosecutions, criminal legal aid, and police powers;
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Centre for Health Law Science and Policy (CHLSP) (Director: Jean McHale), which has membership from colleagues in law, medicine, biomedical ethics and global ethics legal practice.
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Birmingham Community and Criminal Justice Group (Director: John Raine): The Group organises conferences and joint research. The first published fruit of this is K Doolin, J Child, J Raine, A Beech (ed) Whose Criminal Justice: State or Community? (Waterside, 2011).
Research Areas and Projects
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Health Law and the EU: Regulation of research including regulation of human materials; Extra-territorial enforcement of health crimes: Regulation and professionalization of complementary and alternative medicine (Jean McHale - Wellcome Trust Funded)
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Socio-legal regulation of interventions on human and animal bodies, of biotechnologies and analysis of how bodies, body parts and products are legal constituted (Marie Fox - AHRC and the Wellcome Trust)
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Impact of criminal process on health care (Andrew Sanders - AHRC-funded, with University of Manchester)
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Comparative prosecution systems funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung and carried out in co-operation with Washington and Lee University (Marianne Wade)
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The need for and the needs of a European criminal justice system (Marianne Wade - co-funded by the Hercule programme of the European Commission and the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law)
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Spatial displacement of crime (using mathematical modelling to understand the factors shaping crime) (Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, John Fender)
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Substitutability across crime types (Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, Marianna Koli)
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EU integration and crime (Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, John Fender)
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Determinants of crime in India
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Impact of the law on the social and political functioning of the family in contemporary society (Sonia Harris-Short)
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Multilevel governance of subsidies, assessing the case and challenges for a reform of the discipline of subsidies in the WTO, both in general and with specific regard to subsidies aimed at fighting climate change (Luca Rubini - British Academy and AHRC)
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Local Regulation of Businesses (John Raine - LBRO)
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Financial Penalties in Magistrates’ Courts (John Raine - Sentencing Council)
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Police- Community Engagement and Counter-Terrorism (Basia Spalek - West Midlands Counter-Terrorism Unit(2011))
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Conflict within and between communities – with respect to the role of communities in helping to defeat and/or endorse terrorism and the interface with policing efforts to counter terrorism (Basia Spalek - AHRC Connected Communities Programme (2011))
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An international conference exploring community-based initiatives aimed at countering terrorism (Basia Spalek - ESRC Follow-on Fund)
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Community-Police Engagement and Partnerships for Preventing Terror Crime: a collaboration involving researchers in the UK, in the US and in Northern Ireland (Basia Spalek - AHRC/ESRC Connected Communities Programme)
Community Engagement
Several people are involved in related activities outside the university. In particular:
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Andrew Sanders is a member of the Criminal Justice Council and of the Northern Ireland Parole Commission
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John Raine is a member of the Criminal Justice Council and of the Courts Board for Staffordshire and West Mercia.
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Basia Spalek is an Ambassador to the Make Justice Work campaign and a member of the European Policing Research Institutes Collaboration network (EPIC).
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Kate Doolin is a member of the European Forum for Restorative Justice.
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Jean McHale is a member of the Home Office/Imperial College Airwave Project Ethics and Governance Committee.
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Marie Fox is a Coordinating editor of Social and Legal Studies, a Member of Advisory Board of the Journal of Law and Society and founding editor (law) of Somatechnics.