Dear all,

It is with great pleasure to warmly invite you to attend a talk by an internationally renowned feminist criminologist: Professor Loraine Gelsthorpe, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. Her paper is entitled: ‘Women in conflict with the law and the criminal justice dance’. The talk is organised by Professor Azrini Wahidin and the Criminal Justice Centre, Co-directors: Dr Ana Aliverti and Professor Vanessa Munroe.

Date: 29th May. Room: S2:09. Lunch 12.30

The research seminar will start at 1pm and last for an hour -preceded by a buffet lunch at 12.30. The seminar format is quite informal, structured around a 30 minutes presentation and the remaining time for questions. The seminar will be held at Faculty of Social Science, in the Law School.

‘Women in conflict with the law and the criminal justice dance’

This seminar will focus on the rather erratic developments in regard to criminal justice policy concerning women over the years, making particular note of steps forwards and backwards and what is now needed for policy and practice development. The seminar will briefly highlight what we know about 'what works' with women, but also what else we need to know in order to make advances in thinking and practice.

I look forward to seeing you there,

Professor Azrini Wahidin

Loraine Gelsthorpe was born in North Nottinghamshire, England, although she spent some early years of her life in Germany (her mother was German).

Loraine is Director of the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, UK, and Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, and has worked in the Institute since 1994. She had studied at Sussex University to begin with, followed by training and then working as a social worker for a three-year period. What was intended as a one year stay at the Institute of Criminology to study for the M.Phil in Criminology turned into four and a half years when she was persuaded to do a PhD as well, relinquishing the opportunity to serve as a probation officer in Bristol. Post-doctoral appointments at Lancaster University, Bangor University and then the LSE then took her into London to study social work and police decision-making in regard to young offenders, five different prisons to study prisoners’ experiences of different prison regimes in England, and then into different probation areas to look at race and gender issues in pre-sentence reports (once called social inquiry reports).

Loraine has wide ranging interests: criminal justice decision-making and sentencing, women, crime and criminal justice, policy developments relating to women, and ‘what works’ with women, and more generally community penalties, and the links between criminal justice and social justice. She is currently doing research on deaths under community supervision, and on a community housing and support project for women leaving prison. Loraine is a member of the Government’s HM Inspectorate of Probation Advisory Committee, and a Fellow of the Probation Institute in England and Wales. She is also a member of the Howard League for Penal Reform’s Research Advisory Committee, and a member of the 2021 REF sub-committee: Social Policy & Social Work. Loraine is also a trained psychoanalytic psychotherapist (UKCP registered and accredited).

Loraine has an extensive publications list, including chapters in successive Oxford Handbooks of Criminology, and the Routledge Handbook of European Criminology. Her most recent book is: Research Ethics in Criminology edited by M. Cowburn, L. Gelsthorpe & A. Wahidin, A. (Eds) (2017) (London: Routledge). See also: Gelsthorpe, L. (2018) ‘After Corston: community, change, and challenges’ in L. Moore, P. Scraton and A. Wahidin (eds) Women’s Imprisonment and the case for abolition. Critical Reflections on Corston ten years on. (Abingdon, Oxon, Routledge) and Gelsthorpe, L. and Russell, J. (2018) ‘Women and Penal Reform: Two steps forwards, three steps backwards?’ Political Quarterly, 89, 2, pp 227-236.