Criminal Law, Criminal Justice and Criminology

The Criminal Law, Criminal Justice and Criminology research cluster is comprised of staff engaged in research related to criminal justice matters, from the substantive criminal law to the administration of justice to criminological perspectives.

The cluster works closely with the Socio-legal cluster but also covers doctrinal research into crime. The members of the cluster have disparate areas of interest including sex offences, domestic violence, homicide, drugs policy, driving offences and the work of the International Criminal Court. Several of the members conduct research which is interdisciplinary in nature.

Current research

Daniel Bansal's primary research interests lie in criminal law, theory and doctrine. Dan is currently researching the relationship between causation and culpability in criminal law. This research builds on his PhD, which examined the conceptual and normative structure of the causation doctrines in English criminal law. He is also interested in more general issues of criminalisation, offence definition, and offence classification.

Mandy Burton is engaged in research aiming to improve legal responses to domestic abuse in the UK. Her most recent work has focused on improving the process and outcomes in child arrangement cases where there are allegations of domestic abuse. However, she has a particular interest in how lessons from the criminal justice system can inform reforms in family justice (for example implementing special measures and preventing abusive cross examination).

Sally Kyd’s main specialism is in homicide and road traffic offences, with a sub-specialism in the overlap of those two fields. Her most recent project, with Dr Steven Cammiss, explored the enforcement of endangerment offences such as careless and dangerous driving and identified best practice in roads policing. The main findings include: Endangerment offences are prosecuted in the absence of harm, but there are inconsistent approaches to this; The acceptance of third-party footage from members of the public has the potential to develop into a ‘neighbourhood watch’ of the roads; Some forces have developed effective ways of enforcing offences on a limited budget, such as Operation Close Pass and Operation Zig Zag.

Charlotte Walsh’s research is focused upon drug policy, approached from a liberal, human rights informed perspective. More specifically, she is interested in the conflict between the prohibitive drug laws and the rights to freedom of religion, to cognitive liberty, to autonomy, with a particular focus on the plant medicines, such as ayahuasca. Her most recent piece of research analysed relevant court cases in this realm and developed her thinking about what a more progressive system might look like.

PhD research topics in criminal law