Phil Scraton
Phil Scraton is a critical criminologist, academic and author. He is a social researcher, known particularly for his investigative work into the context, circumstances and aftermath of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. More recently, he was a member of the Hillsborough Independent Panel and headed its research. Currently he is professor emeritus, School of Law at Queen's University Belfast, and formerly Director of the Childhood, Transition and Social Justice Initiative.
His research includes the investigation of and inquiry into controversial deaths, most notably the Hillsborough disaster on 15 April 1989 in which 97 football fans were crushed to death. He has also researched deaths in custody, the marginalisation and criminalisation of children and young people, the politics of imprisonment, and the analysis of disasters and their impact on the bereaved and survivors.
Early life and education
Phil Scraton was born in 1949 in Wallasey, Wirral, Cheshire ) and moved to Liverpool in the late 1960s. Brought up a Roman Catholic he attended Sacred Heart Primary School, Moreton and was a seminarian at Ushaw College, Durham 1962–1968. Soon after leaving the seminary he rejected religion. Completing school at Wallasey College of FE, he studied Sociology at the University of Liverpool, gaining a BA and an MA by research. His Masters thesis "Images of Deviance and Politics of Assimilation" examined State institutionalised racism against the Irish Travelling community in Liverpool. His doctoral thesis "Unreasonable Force: Class, Marginality and the Political Autonomy of the Police" was awarded by Lancaster University and focused on policing in the context of the United Kingdom's inner city disturbances in the early 1980s and the 1984/85 Coal Dispute. A qualified teacher, he holds an Advanced Diploma in Outdoor Education. In December 2016 he received an honorary Doctor of Laws of the University of Liverpool. In July 2018 he was awarded honorary doctorates by Edge Hill University, and Lancaster University.Career
In 1979, Phil Scraton joined the Open University's academic staff as a member of the 'Crime, Justice and Society' course team, contributing also to the Social Sciences' Foundation Course. In 1984 at Edge Hill College, with Kathryn Chadwick, he established the Centre for Studies in Crime and Social Justice, developing the university's first Masters and Doctoral programmes. Promoted to Professor in 1990 he remained Director of the centre until 2003. In 2000 he was awarded a Nuffield grant to set up a disasters' research archive and to examine the aftermath of disasters and other traumatising events. In 2001 he and Kathryn Chadwick were awarded an ESRC Seminars Award to hold six two-day seminars on the theme Disasters: Origins, Consequences, Aftermath bringing together researchers, practitioners, campaigners, bereaved and survivors. A member of the Young People, Power and Justice collective, he edited its collection Childhood' in 'Crisis?. In September 2003, he was appointed to a chair in Criminology in the School of Law at Queen's University, Belfast. He has held visiting scholarships at the University of Western Sydney, Monash University Melbourne and the University of Sydney. In 2013 he was awarded a Lowenstein Fellowship at Amherst College, Massachusetts. In 2014 he was Visiting Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire and in 2016 at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He is the all-Ireland representative for the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control.His first book, a co-edited collection with Paul Gordon, was published by Penguin in 1984: Causes for Concern: British criminal justice on trial. Soon after he edited a special edition of the international Journal of Law and Society entitled: The State v. the People: Lessons from the Coal Dispute. He is author of The State of the Police and co-author of In the Arms of the Law: Coroners' Inquests and Deaths in Custody and, with Joe Sim and Paula Skidmore, Prisons Under Protest and editor of Law, Order and the Authoritarian State. He co-authored, with Howard Davis, Beyond Disaster: Identifying and Resolving Inter-Agency Conflict in the Immediate Aftermath of Disasters. The first edition of Hillsborough: The Truth was published in 1999.
More recently, alongside his work on Hillsborough, he published Power, Conflict and Criminalisation a book that covers the full range of his critical research. This was followed by a collection of research writing on prisons, The Violence of Incarceration, co-edited with Jude McCulloch. With co-researchers Siobhan McAlister and Deena Haydon, he co-authored Childhood in Transition: Experiencing Marginalisation and Conflict in Northern Ireland. His research with Linda Moore for the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission into women's imprisonment was published initially by the Commission in two extensive reports, The Hurt Inside and The Prison Within, followed by the text, The Incarceration of Women: Punishing Bodies, Breaking Spirits. With Linda Moore and Azrini Wahidin he co-edited Women’s Imprisonment and the Case for Abolition. He edited special issues of Social Justice: Journal of Crime, Conflict and World Order on Deaths in Custody and Detention and Current Issues in Criminal Justice on the criminalisation and punishment of children and young people.
In 2013, in partnership with Siobhán McAlister, he was awarded ESRC Knowledge Exchange funding for the project Identifying and Challenging the Negative Media Representation of Children and Young People in Northern Ireland. The project, in collaboration with Include Youth and a range of other children's and young people's rights charitable organisations, appointed Faith Gordon as Research Fellow. An initial summary of research findings, Behind the Headlines; Media Representations of Children and Young People in Northern Ireland – The voices and experiences of children and young people was published in April 2015. His recent research also includes the European funded international comparative project Children of Imprisoned Parents.
He was a member of the "Hillsborough Independent Panel" and primary author of Hillsborough: The Report of the Independent Panel https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/229038/0581.pdf In 2017 he was awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship to research the project:‘"Justice for the 96": From Campaign Mantra to Due Process'.
He is author/ editor of ′I Am Sir, You Are A Number': Report of the Independent Panel of Inquiry into the Circumstances of the H-Block and Armagh Prison Protests 1976-1981 https://www.statewatch.org/media/1396/ni-report-inquiry-h-block-armagh-prison-protests-10-20.pdf and co-author, with Gillian McNaull, of Death Investigation, Coroners' Inquests and the Rights of the Bereaved https://www.iccl.ie/report/iccl-report-on-the-coroners-system/
In 2021, with Dr Maeve O'Rourke and Deirdre Mahon he was appointed to the three person Truth Recovery Design Panel to work with survivors and victims of Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in Northern Ireland. Their extensive report, Truth, Acknowledgement and Accountability presented five primary and 87 secondary recommendations, accepted in full by all parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly 30092021-Truth-Recovery-Final-Report-FINAL-Online-Version.pdf The recommendations include an independent panel informing a full statutory public inquiry overseen by victims and survivors, supported by an independent research team. This unprecedented truth investigation will be the first integrated, fully-funded process of its kind ensuring that families will have open access to all institutional records alongside schemes for redress, reparation and memorialization.
In 2022 he headed the five-person team that researched and authored ′″Treated With Contempt″: An Independent Panel Report into Fans' Experiences Before, During and After the 2022 Champions League Final in Paris′. Based on the testimonies of 485 witnesses and journalists its 52 key findings found serious and sustained failure in crowd management and safety; fans placed in sustained collective danger though negligent mismanagement, poor stewarding, hostile policing, indiscriminate use of tear gas, and criminal assaults by local gangs and paramilitary-style police. It found that all UEFA's key guidelines on stadium safety were compromised by egregious failures in managing and policing the event
He is a founder member of INQUEST, United Campaigns for Justice, and a member of the Statewatch Editorial Collective. He was chair of the Board of Include Youth 2006–2013. He became an Include Youth Patron in 2021. In November 2017 he featured as a 'castaway' on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09cvytz followed in 2018 by similar excursions on BBC's Radio Scotland and Radio Ulster!
Awards
In 2012–13, Scraton received the Queen's University Vice-Chancellor's inaugural award for research impact. In 2013 his research was runner-up in the Times Higher Educational Supplement's Research Project of the Year award.In September 2016 he was awarded the Freedom of the City of Liverpool for his long-term work, spanning three decades, supporting the families' campaign for justice. Two months later, along with Margaret Aspinall, Chair of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, he was awarded Campaigner of the Year by the Political Studies Association.
In December 2016 he declined an OBE in the 2017 New Year Honours list stating that he 'could not receive an honour on the recommendation of those who remained unresponsive to the determined efforts of bereaved families and survivors to secure truth and justice'. He also stated that in his 'scholarship and teaching' he is 'a strong critic of the historical, cultural and political contexts of imperialism and their international legacy' and proposed that people's contribution to society should not be connected to 'British Empire'.