Dr Matt Hopkins

I joined the School in January 2011 and I have a PhD entitled 'Abuse and Violence Against Small Businesses'. I have published in high quality journals such as the British Journal of Criminology, the International Review of Victimology, Criminology and Criminal Justice and the Security Journal and have been involved in a number of applied research projects and evaluations of national government programmes. My work spans a variety of areas in relation to crime prevention, commercial victimisation and organised crime.

I am a member of the Home Office Commercial Victimisation Study steering group and a Research Fellow of the Security Institute. I also sit on the editorial board of the Security Journal and Trends in Organized Crime. 

I am Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Director of the East Midlands Violence Reduction Intervention network (VRIN).

My research interests span a variety of areas including organised crime, commercial victimisation, acid attacks and crime investigation. My main interest is in how we can prevent crime and the types of interventions that work to reduce crime.

I have been involved in a number of research projects throughout my career. The most recent examples include:

Police and CPS demand and resource impact on case progression 
Commissioned by the Home Office, this project aims to explore factors that impact on crime investigations and case progression; and what factors affect police decisions to pursue investigative action. The methodology is based around collection of data from 1,000 investigations and interviews with police officers and CPS lawyers.  

The Violence Reduction Intervention Network (VRIN)
The network is a collaboration between EMPAC, the UoL and the five East Midlands police areas. VRIN aims to develop a network for knowledge exchange; disseminate good practice in order to influence policy and practice, and become a repository of good practice in violence reduction accessible to practitioners. To read our latest discussion paper, please go to the VRIN webpage.

https://le.ac.uk/criminology/research/violence-reduction-information-network

Hopkins, M. (forthcoming 2022). Researching active offenders. In J.C. Barnes and David R. Forde. The Encyclopaedia of Research Methods and Statistical Techniques in Criminology and Criminal Justice, Wiley: New Jersey.

Hopkins, M. (forthcoming, 2022) Business resilience to crime: The harms of crime, security and crime tolerance. In M, Gill. Handbook of Security Vol 3.

Hopkins, M., Neville, L. and Sanders, T. (2021). Acid Crime: Context, Motivation and Prevention. Palgrave MacMillan. Link to Acid Crime Book

Koeppen, B., Hopkins, M. (2021) Security guards as victims of violence: using organisational support theory to understand how support for victims could have positive implications for the security industry. Security  Journal 34, 824 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41284-020-00262-2

Hopkins, M. (2019) Business face higher rates of Victimisation than Households or individuals. In J, Treadwell & A. Lynes. 50 Facts everyone should know about crime and punishment in Britain. Bristol, Polity Press pp. 41-43

Hopkins, M., Shelton, N. Identifying Money Laundering Risk in the United Kingdom: Observations from National Risk Assessments and a Proposed Alternative Methodology. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 25, 63–82 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-018-9390-5

Hopkins, M. & Chivers, S. (2019) Theorizing hit-and-run: A Study of Driver Decision Making Processes after a Road Traffic Collision. Criminology and Criminal Justice. 19(1):45-61. https://cms2.le.ac.uk/sitecore/shell/Controls/Rich%20Text%20Editor/DOI%2010.1057/s41300-017-0036-1