Tim Newburn

Tim Newburn has been Professor of Criminology and Social Policy at the LSE since 2002. He was Head of Department of Social Policy from 2010-13 and Director of the Mannheim Centre for Criminology from 2003-2009. Prior to joining LSE he was Joseph Rowntree Professor of Urban Social Policy at Goldsmiths, University of London and Director of the Public Policy Research Unit (1997-2002). He has also worked at the University of Leicester (1982-85), the Home Office Research & Planning Unit (1985-90), the National Institute for Social Work (1990-92) and the Policy Studies Institute (1992-97).

He is the author of over 40 books, including: The Future of Policing (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); Criminology (3rd edition, Routledge, 2017) and Criminology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2018). His latest books are Orderly Britain: How Britain resolved its everyday problems: from dog mess to double-parking (with Ward, Little Brown, 2022), and The Official History of Criminal Justice, vol. IV: Politics of Law and Order (Routledge, November 2022, with David Downes).

Tim was editor of the journal Policy Studies (1995-2001), the founding editor of Criminology and Criminal Justice (2001-2006) and is General Editor of Routledge’s Key Ideas in Criminology series, and a series editor of Key Thinkers in Criminology. He was elected to the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences in 2005, and was President of the British Society of Criminology from 2005-2008.

Tim’s research has spanned a number of areas including policing, restorative justice, youth justice, drugs and alcohol, comparative policy making and urban violence. He was the LSE’s lead on Reading the Riots, their prize-winning research with the Guardian on the 2011 disorder, and with Professors David Downes and Paul Rock is currently working on an Official History of Criminal Justice.

Expertise Details

• Criminal justice; penal policy; policing; riots; youth crime & justice; history of criminal justice