If I may freely paraphrase Lady Bracknell (in The Importance of Being Earnest), to deliver an inaugural lecture one year after arrival in Cambridge seems unfortunate; to deliver it after being in post for two years looks like carelessness. Yet, as those from the Institute of Criminology will know, there is a particular reason for this timing. This month marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the University's postgraduate course in criminology, and I was myself a student on that first course, back in 1961. For me, therefore, there is a special personal satisfaction that this lecture is immediately to be followed by our formal celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the course.

Reflections on the Criminological Enterprise

Annual report, 1980-81

Sir Leon Radzinowicz was one of the last great exemplars of modern criminology. Yet he remains, 32 years since his retirement from the Wolfson chair of Criminology at Cambridge, an almost unrecogni...

Sir Leon’s shadow:

Criminological research is a recent event in the history of the social and behavioral sciences in the United Kingdom. Its practice on any significant scale is a feature of the last quarter of a century, although the roots of this development were laid half a century ago and may be traced back even further. At the time of writing-May 1982-the main source of support for criminological research comes from government funds, and more than half of all the research workers engaged full-time in this pursuit are employed by official agencies. The account that follows reflects this perspective. And, since any speculation about the likely direction of research is determined in some degree by the past, attention will be given to those strands which, woven together, not only make up the present pattern but are likely to influence the future design.

John Croft

Papers

Criminological Research in Great Britain, with a Note on the Council of Europe