Conferences
Socio-Legal Studies Association Annual Conference 2023
4th – 6th April 2023
Dr Tom Kemp presented initial findings on our WP1 research into the statutory regulation of prisons. The paper was ‘Conceptualising the official regulation of prisons: Problematizing the Prison’.
EUROCRIM2025
The 25th Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology (Eurocrim 2025) took place at the American College of Greece in Athens from 3rd to 6th September 2025.
Professor Philippa Tomczak, Dr Tom Kemp and Dr Matthew Hall of the RECEDE research team (funded by European Research Council Starting Grant), attended the conference and were accepted to carry out a roundtable with the title “The regulation of criminal justice detention by multisectoral actors”.
The following presentations were given: (i) The regulation of criminal justice detention by multisectoral actors. Prof Philippa Tomczak
This presentation set out the premises and innovations in the RECEDE grant, developing Tomczak, P. (2022) Reconceptualizing multisectoral prison regulation: Voluntary organizations and bereaved families as regulators. Theoretical Criminology, 26(3), 494-514, which won the 2022 European Society of Criminology Young Criminologist Award.
(ii) Problematisation of detention by statutory regulators. Dr Tom Kemp
This presented an analysis of the discursive production of custody regulatory regimes in England and Wales, arguing that regulation is a potentially useful domain in which official problems of custody are constructed using techniques of inspection, monitoring and complaints management. However, these techniques as well as the socio-institutional framework that guide them routinely focus attention at institutional level, bureaucratic failings rather than the systemic and political problems that are root of detention crises. This leaves us with questions about the ways regulatory action may be transformed to address more fundamental issues and to discuss the dangers for a less technocratic and ‘toothless’ regulatory system.
(iii) Multisectoral regulation amidst resource scarcity. Dr Matthew Hall
Regulation seems to draw a distinction between what is within its domain and what is outside, and this presentation focused on how the context that is left outside the domain of regulation matters for how regulatory regimes can contribute – to improvements or otherwise. The case study was regulation in prisons in England and Wales, in the context of declining resources and posed the following questions: Does regulation enable a kind of formalised denial of the consequences of declining resources? Do regulatory regimes obscure substantive decline?
Thank you to Dr Thomas Guiney (University of Nottingham) who chaired the session, and the discussants: Prof Layla Skinns (University of Sheffield, UK), Dr Andriani Fili (University of Oxford Centre for Criminology, UK), Prof Dr Kirstin Drenkhahn (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) and Prof Dr Rita Elisabeth Haverkamp (University of Tübingen, Germany). These participants supported and advanced our thinking and we are grateful for their time and input.
At the European Society of Criminology Prison Working Group Meeting in Vienna, taking place 9-10th of April 2026, Dr Laura Haas presented initial findings from the WP4 research into the regulation of inequalities in detention.
In the presentation titled ‘Overseen but Overlooked? The Fragmented Regulation of Deaths and Intersectional Inequalities in Detention’, she spoke about how the intersectional nature of systemic inequalities is not sufficiently recognised in reports and reviews on deaths. Class in particular appears to be accepted as a default mode for people in detention and not considered as a central analytic category, enabling criminal justice institutions to avoid deeper engagement with the harms produced by austerity and penal expansion. She concluded that, while we need to recognise systemic inequalities like race, class and gender to understand what factors underpin and lead to deaths, we need to build coalitions and mobilise across identity markers to challenge systemic inequalities and initiate change.
The annual conference of the British Society of Criminology took place at Nottingham Trent University from 7-10 July 2026.
Professor Philippa Tomczak, Dr Tom Kemp, Dr Matthew Hall and Dr Laura Haas of the RECEDE research team presented a panel entitled ‘Examining the regulation of criminal justice detention.’
The following presentations were given: (i) Detention regulation and the contested ontology of custodial institutions; a critical interpretive synthesis, Dr Tom Kemp; (ii) The responsibility gap; danger, dehumanisation and delays in England and Wales’ criminal justice detainee transport system, Dr Matty Hall; (iii) Regulating deaths in detention; an intersectional precarity approach to regulatory responses, Dr Laura Haas. The session was introduced and chaired by Professor Philippa Tomczak.
The session was a great opportunity to showcase our work to date and advance our thinking with questions and participation from the audience.