Plenary Speakers

Fr. Peter McVerry SJ

Peter McVerry is a Jesuit priest who has spent many years working with homeless young people. In 1979, he set up a hostel for homeless boys. Four years later he established the Arrupe Society, now known as the Peter McVerry Trust, to provide accommodation and support for young people who are homeless.

He is a long-term advocate of prison reform and he is the author of The Meaning is in the Shadows, a collection of writings reflecting his experiences of working in Dublin's inner city. He questions the structures that affect the lives of those on the margins and makes radical suggestions for change. His more recent book, Jesus: Social Revolutionary?, challenges churches to re-examine their priorities and says that social justice should be at the heart of all that the churches preach and do.

Lesley McAra

Chair of Penology, School of Law, University of Edinburgh

Lesley McAra was appointed Head of School at the School of Law, University of Edinburgh in 2011. Her research interests lie in the general areas of the sociology of punishment and the sociology of law and deviance. Particular interests include: youth crime and juvenile justice; comparative criminal justice; gender, crime and criminal justice; and the impact of multi-level governance on crime control and the penal process.

She is Co-Director of the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, a longitudinal study of pathways into and out of offending, focusing on a cohort of around 4,300 young people.

Lesley McAra is a member of the Centre for Law and Society and an associate member of the Europa Institute, both located within the Edinburgh Law School. She is also the Convenor of the Empirical Legal Research Network, a cross-university initiative aimed at facilitating partnership-working across different disciplines, pooling expertise and functioning as a resource bank for researchers at all career levels.

Mary Robinson

Mary Robinson served as the seventh President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997 and as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002. She rose to prominence as an academic, barrister, campaigner and member of the Irish Senate during the years 1969 to 1989.

Since 2004, she has been Professor of Practice in International Affairs at Columbia University, where she teaches international human rights. In 2004, she received the Amnesty International "Ambassador of Conscience Award" for her work in promoting human rights.

Juliet Lyon

Juliet Lyon CBE was a member of the Reference Group for the Corston review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system and Lord Bradley's review of people with mental health needs and learning disabilities in the justice system. Previously she worked in education, mental health and justice.

The Prison Reform Trust is a leading independent charity working to create a just, humane and effective penal system in the UK. It produces information, conducts applied research and effects policy leverage. It provides the secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Penal Affairs Group.

Jean Corston

Member of the House of Lords

Baroness Jean Corston was a Labour MP for Bristol East from April 1992 to 2005. Until stepping down at the 2005 General Election, she was chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party. In 2005, she was created Baroness Corston, of St George in the County and City of Bristol.

Baroness Corston was commissioned by the Home Office to conduct a review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the Criminal Justice System of England and Wales. The report, published in 2007, outlines the need for "a distinct, radically different, visibly-led, strategic, proportionate, holistic, woman-centered, integrated approach".

Richard Wilkinson

Co-Director, The Equality Trust

Richard Wilkinson as played a formative role in international research on the social determinants of health and on the societal effects of income inequality. He studied economic history at the London School of Economics before training in epidemiology.

He is Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham Medical School, Honorary Professor at University College London and a Visiting Professor at the University of York. With Kate Pickett, he co-wrote The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, which won the 2011 Political Studies Association Publication of the Year Award and the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas Prize. He is also a co-founder of The Equality Trust.

Ian O'Donnell 

Professor of Criminology, University College Dublin

Ian O'Donnell joined the UCD Institute of Criminology in 2000. Previously he was Director of the Irish Penal Reform Trust (1997–2000), Research Officer at the Oxford University Centre for Criminological Research (1992–1997) and Research Assistant at the University of London (1989–1992).

He has been a Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford since 1993. During his time in England, Ian O'Donnell served as a member of the Board of Visitors for Pentonville Prison and as a magistrate on the Oxford bench. He is a Chartered Forensic Psychologist and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society.

Alison Liebling

Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge.

Alison Liebling has published several books, including Suicides in Prison (1992), Prisons and their Moral Performance: A Study of Values, Quality and Prison Life (2004) and (with Shadd Maruna) The Effects of Imprisonment (2005). She has also published widely in criminological journals. She has recently completed a repeat of a highly-regarded study of staff–prisoner relationships at Whitemoor high security imprisonment, which explored the changing nature of high security prison, as well as a second edition of her book, The Prison Officer, and an edited collection on prison officers and prison culture (in the European Journal of Criminology), in which she reflects on what is distinctive about the work of prison officers, their skills and expertise.

Andrew Coyle

Emeritus Professor of Prison Studies, University of London, and Visiting Professor, University of Essex

Andrew Coyle was founding Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies in King's College London from 1997 to 2005. He is a prisons adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Latin American Institute, the Council of Europe, including its Committee for the Prevention of Torture, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and several national governments. He is a member of the UK Foreign Secretary's Expert Committee against Torture.

Before coming to King's College he worked for 25 years at a senior level in the prison services of the United Kingdom. While in the Scottish Prison Service he was Governor of Greenock Prison, Peterhead Prison and Shotts Prison. From 1991 to 1997, he was Governor of Brixton Prison in London. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 2003 for his contribution to international penal reform. He is a Fellow of King's College.

Tom O'Malley

Senior Lecturer in Law, National University of Ireland, Galway

Tom O'Malley has taught in the Law School at the National University of Ireland, Galway since 1987, having previously been a Graduate Fellow at Yale Law School. He was also a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Criminological Research at the University of Oxford for the academic year 1992–93. In recent years, his teaching has concentrated on the areas of criminal justice, administrative law and evidence.

He is also a practising barrister. He has served on several law reform bodies, including a committee established to review the qualifications for appointment to the High Court and Supreme Court judiciary, and the Working Group on the Criminal Jurisdiction of the Courts (the Fennelly Committee) which reported in 2003. He is currently a member of a steering committee appointed by the Courts Service to consider the establishment of a sentencing information system. He has published books on sexual offences, criminal justice, sentencing, and sources of law, as well as many law journal articles.

Shadd Maruna

Professor of Justice and Human Development at the School of Law, Queen's University Belfast

Shadd Maruna previously taught at the State University of New York and the University of Cambridge, and he has a Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University, Chicago. in 2001, his book, Making Good, was awarded the "Outstanding Contribution to Criminology" by the American Society of Criminology. In 2004, he was named the "Distinguished New Scholar in Corrections and Sentencing" by the American Society of Criminology. He is currently a Soros Justice Fellow and has previously been a Fulbright Scholar and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Dr. Dragan Petrovec

Professor of Criminology, Institute of Criminology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

After finishing his law studies in 1975, Dragan Petrovec worked in the Prison Administration Service of the Ministry of Justice. In 1983, he moved to the women's prison institution of which in 1990 he became a Governor. In 1993, Dragan moved to the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, where he received a doctorate with the thesis The Aims of Punishment – a Dead End of Neo-classical Theories. His primary fields of research are philosophy of punishment, treatment ideology and practice, crime policy and victims.

He has published a number of books including Kazen brez zločina (Punishment without Crime) (1998), Violence in the Media (2003) and Kult žrtve (The Cult of the Victim (2006)). His recent research projects, of which he was the only author, include: Idea and Reality of Socio-therapeutic orientation (1999) and The Impact of Social Changes on the Implementation of Penal Sanctions (2004).

Tapio Lappi-Seppälä

Director-General, National Research Institute of Legal Policy, Finland

Tapio Lappi-Seppälä is the Director-General of the National Research Institute of Legal Policy, Finland since 1995 and a member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences. He has a long career as a senior legislative adviser in criminal justice in the Ministry of Justice, including membership of the Criminal Law Reform Task Force in Finland (1989–1999), chairmanship of the working group preparing the general part of the criminal code (1993–1999), member of the committees preparing the reform of the prison system (1999–2001), juvenile criminal justice system (2001–2002), and the system of community sanctions 2010–2011.

He has taken an active part in international co-operation in criminal justice issues in the Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology; the Council of Europe; the International Penal and Penitentiary Foundation (Vice-President, 2005–2008); and in the European Society of Criminology (board member 2009–2011). He has published several books, research reports and articles in the field criminal law, criminology and penal policy.