A criminologist and former Home Office researcher is questioning penal policy in the UK which has led to the country having the highest custodial rate of any other European industrialised country.
Prof Carol Hedderman, Head of the Department of Criminology at the University of Leicester, formerly the Scarman Centre, is to question why the use of imprisonment has increased at a time when crime is falling.
She says: "The male prison population has nearly doubled and the female prison population has trebled since the early 1990s. We now have a higher imprisonment rate than any other Western industrialised country apart from the US. Yet for the last 9 years, crime has been falling? Why has our use of imprisonment increased if crime is falling?," asks Professor Hedderman.
She will address these issues at her inaugural lecture, titled Eighty thousand not out – the rising prison population in England and Wales to be given on October 25 at 5.30pm in Ken Edwards Lecture Theatre 1.
Prof Hedderman adds: "What part has our increased use of custody played in reducing crime? Has it made us all feel safer? Are the British public as keen to be tough on crime as some politicians and pundits would have us believe? Has the increased use of custody been worth the extra £1billion it has cost? What will the longer term costs to our society be?"
Using material drawn from criminological research and government statistics, Prof Hedderman seeks to provide non-technical answers to these and other key questions concerning our use of prison that politicians are sometimes reluctant to address. Prof Hedderman was appointed Professor of Criminology at the University of Leicester in October 2004. In September 2005 she became Head of the Criminology Department where she heads a team of 14 full-time research and lecturing staff. She joined the Home Office in 1986 as a Research Officer while completing a PhD on the sentencing of women at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University. She left the Home Office in 2004 as Assistant Director of the Research, Development and Statistics Directorate with responsibility for prison and probation research and statistics.
