The Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice (CCCJ)
Located in the one of the UK’s leading Law Schools, the Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice (CCCJ) at Manchester University boasts a distinctive track of record of empirical research on offenders and other hard to reach groups alongside a solid international reputation for critical research on crime policy, criminal law and criminal justice. With respect to research methods, CCCJ members have particular expertise in the practice of biographical and narrative approaches to interviewing, ethnography, psychosocial case analysis, qualitative and quantitative longitudinal research, survey design and applied statistical analysis, programme evaluation and policy analysis. With regard to its topical specialisms, CCCJ members’ expertise is clustered around the following four themes:
- Drugs: Markets, Policies and Consumption: including agenda-setting research on the normalization of recreational drug use; the drug-crime link and criminal justice responses to drug use; drug markets and distribution systems; regulatory perspectives on drug policy; and drug treatment.
- Violence, Criminal Networks and Inequalities: including empirical projects on domestic abuse, racially aggravated violence and hate crime; gang membership and responses to gang related crime; the causes and consequences of rioting; mass violence and genocide; migration networks and people trafficking; and the role of peer support networks in offender reintegration and desistance.
- Policing and Cross Border Crime Control: including empirical research on police complaints, the complaints system and police accountability; the daily life and regulation of border control; strategies of governing irregular migration; the development of and national responses to trafficking, political disorder, and the threat of terrorist; asset recovery; covert policing and surveillance; and the operation and governance of private security.
- Criminal Law and Justice: including research on miscarriages of justice; offender management; historical perspectives on legal process and doctrine; criminal defences in 19th/20th centuries; sentencing and enforcement of judicial penalties; consequences of prior criminal record; courts and their proceedings; prosecutorial process; punitive civil sanctions; the role of law in democratic transformation; plea bargaining and informal processes.
CCCJ is currently home to fifteen members of academic staff, over twenty postgraduate research students, as well as visiting and honorary professors from the US, the Netherlands and Finland. It is part of the ESRC NW Doctoral Training Centre and receives funding for postgraduate research via the Security, Conflict and Justice Pathway.
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