Featured Blog Post
ESC Awards: Nominatons sought
The ESC is seeking nominations for the ESC European Criminology Award, the ESC Young Criminologist Award, the ESC Book Award, as well as the ESC Distinghuished Services Award. All nominations shall be sent to the Executive Secretary by no later than the 31 March 2022.
Recent Blog Posts
Latest Regular Issue
Recent Issues
2021 / 3 Issue
ESC European Criminology Award Acceptance Speech
It is a very great honour for me to be awarded the 2021 ESC Lifetime Achievement Award for contribution to European Criminology. I would like to thank the Award Committee for their work and particularly Michele Burman for nominating me. The ESC is very dear to me. The first conference I attended was in September 2001 (the year of 9/11 of course). I have attended most conferences since and always look forward to them as a highlight of the year, to meet old friends, and to make new friends, to listen, learn, compare and contrast, and I always take away new questions and new things to think about. Both the Working Group on Women, Crime and Criminal Justice and the Working Group on Community Sanctions have also been hugely important to me in terms of expanding and challenging my thinking, sharing ideas, and forging connections and alliances. The ESC has achieved genuine openness, inclusiveness and has fostered a spirit of appreciative enquiry, avoiding both silo thinking and internecine methodological debates (for the most part anyway…).
ESC Early Career Award Acceptance Speech
To be awarded the ESC Early Career Award has been a true honour, not only for the academic recognition of my work, but also because this award came at a time when I was wondering (and, at times, wandering) about how to position my work within criminology, with some of my more recent research projects and publications evolving into interdisciplinary scholarship and finding a ‘home’ within and beyond criminology – and with some struggles, as they were at times considered by reviewers to be too in between disciplines. As such, there is a sense of relief in being reminded that I belong to my primary academic community, the one that has welcomed me since the early days of my PhD studies.
COVID-19, Crime and Law Enforcement
As I am writing this piece, COVID-19 cases are again on the rise. While the past week saw approximately three million newly reported cases globally, two thirds of these were in Europe. Governments respond differently, some impose lockdowns, some attempt to shield the non-vaccinated, some are announcing new measures if trends are not bucked soon.
Professor Loraine Gelsthorpe
Professor Loraine Gelsthorpe has been a member of the ESC since 2002 and initiated the ESC Working Group on Gender, Crime and Justice in 2010. She has co-chaired that Group ever since, organising panels at each ESC annual conference and mentoring early career colleagues, throughout each year, tirelessly providing support and feedback on their work and strengthening cooperation and networks among European scholars. The esteem in which her scholarship and leadership is held, was evidenced through her election as President of the British Society of Criminology (2011-2015).
Call for Applications - Newsletter Editor
The ESC invites applications for a new editor of Criminology in Europe, the Newsletter of the ESC, to begin in January 2023.
EUROC Working Group Report
The Corruption risk, risk of Corruption? Distinguishing criteria between petty and high-ranking corruption project workshop—on online platform—was held on 22–23 March.1 The kick-off meeting analyzed the definition, forms, measuring, actors, and language of corruption. The workshop brought together experts from Portugal, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Poland to support and promote the successful implementation of the project with their expertise. The professional presentations showed the issues related to corruption, the unanswered questions, as well as the hopeful issues for the successful implementation of these projects. The lectures were followed by a long and vivid discourse.
2021 / 2 Issue
Candidate for ESC President: Klaus Boers
My research interests are still in life-course criminology, integrative theoretical models, economic crime, social control and attitudes toward crime and sanctioning. My understanding of criminological work is analytical, undertaking theory-guided empirical investigations. Since I attended an ESC meeting for the first time (in Krakow in 2005), the annual meetings and the broad spectrum of working groups with its vivid discussions have marked for me the most important forum of criminological discourse.
Candidate for At-Large Board Membership: Marie Torstensson Levander
I am honored to be nominated for the role as At-large board member of the European Society of Criminology and, if elected, I would consider it a great privilege to serve the European criminology community.
Executive Secretary Annual Report 2020
In 2020, the European Society of Criminology (ESC) had 1036 members, and 582 of them took part in the 20th Annual Meeting of the ESC, organised online on 10 and 11 September in collaboration with the ESC Working Groups. Six different awards were presented during the conference. Michael Hough received the 2020 European Criminology Award; Rok Hacin received the 2020 ESC Young Criminologist Award; Steve van de Weijer, Rutger Leukfeldt, and Wim Bernasco received the European Journal of Criminology Best Article of the Year 2019 Award; Wim Hardyns received the 2020 ESC Early Career Award; Martin Killias and David J. Smith received the 2020 Distinguished Services to the ESC Award; and Dirk van Zyl Smit and Catherine Appleton received the 2020 ESC Book Award. Through an electronic vote, the ESC members appointed Catrien Bijleveld as President-Elect, Fernando Miró-Llinares as At-Large Board Member, and Daniel Fink as Auditor. At the end of the conference, Aleksandras Dobryninas took office as President of the ESC, replacing Lesley McAra until the end of the next conference.
Obituary: Martti Lehti
The Finnish criminologist Martti Lehti passed away on 18 April 2021, after a short illness, at the age of 58.
Obituary: Thomas Mathiesen
Thomas Mathiesen, a key figure in the development of criminology and sociology of law, passed away this summer.
Presidential Message: Criminological knowledge: between academic truths, political interests and popular feelings
COVID-19 is still the most turbulent issue in the life of our societies, and one can easily predict the growing number of criminological research projects and publications connected with pandemic themes. Soon, we can expect new exciting data on the crime trends during the pandemic and post-pandemic periods, as well as new theoretical insights on crime in new bio- and infotechnological societies. However, I would like to take the current pandemic situation as a counterpoint for a slightly different theme – the nature and role of criminological knowledge in society.
2021 / 1 Issue
Criminology of the Damned Questions
Executive Secretary Annual Report 2019
In 2019, the European Society of Criminology (ESC) reached new all-time records in terms of membership and participants to its annual conference. The number of members reached 1386, and 1433 criminologists attended the 19th Annual Meeting of the ESC, which took place in Ghent, Belgium, from 18 to 21 September 2019. During the conference, Tapio Lappi-Seppälä received the 2019 European Criminology Award, Kjersti Lohne the 2019 ESC Young Criminologist Award, and Maria Libak Pedersen the European Journal of Criminology Best Article of the Year 2018 Award. Six fellowships to attend the conference were awarded to young criminologists from Eastern Europe. The General Assembly elected Aleksandras Dobryninas as President-Elect, Olga Petintseva as At-large Board member, and Uberto Gatti as Auditor. The day following the General Assembly, Lesley McAra took office as President of the ESC, replacing Tom Vander Beken until the end of the next conference.
On Accepting the 2020 ESC Criminology Award
What I would like to do is to reflect on the changes that have occurred in the policy environment for criminal justice over the last 25 years. It is a game of two halves – I’ll start with an angry rant about the retreat from rationality and liberal values in countries seduced by right wing populism. After half time, I shall sketch out what I see as viable responses to this for criminologists keen to help shape policy. Inevitably, I will talk about the justice system I know best, covering England and Wales, but my analysis is, I hope, applicable more broadly across Europe.
Mike Hough
Professor Hough has been at the forefront of academic criminology and criminal justice in Europe and around the world for 40 years now. He is a leading world figure in the field and has made a singular and sustained contribution to the study and practice of criminal justice in Europe.
ESC Newsletter Renewed
After careful deliberations, the ESC Board has decided last year to abandon the print version of the Newsletter. The decision offered the opportunity to have a fresh look at the Newsletter. Here is what has changed.
2020 / 2 Issue
Criminology in a Time of Pandemic
This is my last Presidential message at the end of what has proved a tumultuous year. The global pandemic has impacted almost every facet of our lives, and is likely to have far reaching consequences for education and research. In this message I am going to offer some reflections on the past twenty years of the ESC, and the challenges which the global pandemic currently poses for theory and method within criminology. The message will conclude with some thoughts about the implications of these challenges for the future of criminology as both an applied and theoretically informed field of enquiry.
Candidate for At-Large Board Membership: Fernando Miro
Given the proposal made for my nomination, and with the essential spirit of learning much more about criminology in Europe and to contribute my experience to what is required, I have decided to accept and apply to become a member of the ESC Board. If I am elected, I will work hard to promote the essential work of the ESC and to continue to advance towards their goals.
Candidate for ESC President: Catrien Bijleveld
I am a firm believer in and supporter of European criminology, and consider it a great and important achievement that we have this society and our European journal that is so widely read and highly ranked. The European conferences have grown immensely, not only quantitatively but also qualitatively, and are now at least as varied and interesting as the conferences we flock to across the pond, such as the ASC. It is very important that the European society is inclusive for all Europe, and for junior as well as senior researchers, and for that it is vital that young researchers assume prominent roles and tasks in our society and the journal, and that the society’s conferences are well accessible for researchers from less affluent European countries.’
2019 / 1 Issue
Conferences & Workshops
Job Annoucements
Lecturer in Law and Criminal Justice Practice Sheffield Hallam University - Department of Law and Criminology
Sheffield, United Kingdom
fixed term
part time
Assistant/Associate Professor in Sociology Durham University - Social Sciences and Social Care
Durham, United Kingdom
permanent
full time