Roger Matthews, one a group of influential British criminologists who challenged both the dominant rightist “administrative” conception of law and order and what they viewed an idealistic perspective of crime from the left, has died from the effects of the coronavirus.

Remembering criminologist Joan Petersilia who spent her career examining the agencies that conduct U.S. criminal justice, and whose solidly evidence-based work was a major influence in affecting corrections and sentencing reforms.

David Canter reviews The Handbook of Organised Crime and Politics. Its crucial findings drawn from across studies in Europe, the Americas and South East Asia, is that in many places politicians benefit from the support of criminal organisations. In turn those organisations require the backing of politicians.

David Canter considers the possible impact on criminals of accounts of psychologists’ contributions to solving crime. “Typically, criminals do not have the intellectual abilities to study academic or true-crime to learn how to avoid detection.”

What duty do social scientists have to report illegal activity that they witness as part of their fieldwork? If you answered quickly, you may not have thought about the issue all that deeply.

A number of scholars drawn from American Society of Criminology’s Division on Women and Crime presented their evidence-based suggestions for the improvement of existing policies and legislation, as well as new legislative and funding initiatives, at the division’s first-ever congressional briefing in Washington, D.C.

In determining what makes a successful prison, where would you place ‘trust’? Alison Liebling, director of the Cambridge University Institute of Criminology’s Prisons Research Centre, would place it at the top spot. As she tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast, she believes what makes a prison good is the existence and the practice of trust.

Social Science Space is presenting 10 shortlisted essays written by young social scientists in an ESRC competition looking at how social science might change the world in the next half century. This week we present Rebecca Wheeler’s hopes that applied cognitive psychology can and should improve policing.