University College Cork (UCC): Youth Justice 2008: Speakers

Plenary Speakers

[top] Professor Chris Cunneen is the NewSouth Global Chair in Criminology at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Previously, Professor Cunneen taught criminology at the University of Sydney Law School from 1990-2005. He was also the Director of the Institute of Criminology at Sydney Law School between 1999-2005.

Chris Cunneen has had a long interest in juvenile justice issues and has published widely in the area including Juvenile Justice. Youth and Crime in Australia, Oxford University Press, 2007. He was also Chairperson of the government’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Council 2001-2007, and a member of the New South Wales Taskforce on Child Sexual Assault in Aboriginal Communities 2003-2006.

He has worked with a number of Australian Royal Commissions and Inquiries (including the Stolen Generations Inquiry and the National Inquiry into Racist Violence), and with the federal Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.

[top] Barry Goldson is Professor of Criminology and Social Policy at the University of Liverpool. He is best known for his work in the fields of youth justice studies/youth criminology and critical policy analysis. He is the founding editor of Youth Justice: An International Journal (Sage) and his most recent books include: In The Care of the State: Child deaths in penal custody in England and Wales (2005); Youth Crime and Justice (2006); Comparative Youth Justice (2006) and the Dictionary of Youth Justice (2008). He is currently co-editing (with Muncie) a three volume set of international ‘major works’ on youth crime and juvenile justice for the Sage Library of Criminology, to be published in 2008. He has served as an advisor/consultant to several major research projects including the ESRC’s ‘Pathways Into and Out of Crime’ programme. He has provided expert evidence to the United Nations Secretary General’s study on violence against children, the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Children, the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain and an independent inquiry into youth justice policy in Scotland. In 2004-2006 he was a member of Lord Carlile's advisory panel to the independent inquiry into the use of physical restraint, solitary confinement and strip-searching of children in prisons and other penal institutions in England and Wales. In 2007 he served as President of the Scientific Committee of the International Congress: Phenomena in Juvenile Delinquency: New penal forms which took place in Seville, Spain. He is a member of The European Society of Criminology Juvenile Justice Network and he is the founding Chair of the British Society of Criminology Youth Criminology/Youth Justice Network. Finally, he is a non-executive Director/Trustee of the Howard League for Penal Reform and he has long-standing relations with a range of national and international non-governmental, human rights and progressive penal reform organisations.

[top] Ursula Kilkelly is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Criminal Justice and Human Rights and the Faculty of Law at University College Cork. She has published widely in the area of children’s rights, with a focus on using the international children’s rights standards as a benchmark against which law and policy can be measured. She was part of the Queen’s University team that undertook a major research project into children’s rights for the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People in 2004 and in 2007 she undertook a major audit of the barriers to children’s rights in Ireland for the Ombudsman for Children. In youth justice, she has researched children’s rights in detention and in the Children Court and she is author of Youth Justice in Ireland Tough Lives Rough Justice published by Irish Academic Press in 2006. She is editor of ECHR and Irish Law (Jordans 2004 and second edition forthcoming 2008), author of The Child and the ECHR (Ashgate 1999) and Children’s Rights in Irish Law (Tottel, 2008). She is Chairperson of the Irish Penal Reform Trust and works closely with a number of NGOs including the Children’s Law Centre in Belfast where she has critiqued the Northern Ireland Bill of Rights process. She is on the editorial board of Youth Justice An International Journal (Sage) and will guest edit a special edition of the journal publishing some of the papers from this conference.

[top] Lesley McAra is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the Centre for Law and Society, University of Edinburgh, and co-director of the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime. Prior to this she was a Senior Research Officer within the Central Research Unit of the (then) Scottish Office where she was responsible for the development and management of a research programme evaluating social work criminal justice services. In 2004 she acted as a specialist advisor on youth justice to the ‘Justice 2 Committee’ of the Scottish Parliament and she is currently an academic advisor to the Scottish Government ‘Scotstat, Crime and Justice Committee’. Recent publications include an article (with Susan McVie) in the European Journal of Criminology exploring the impact of contact with youth justice agencies on patterns of desistance from offending and a chapter on crime control and penal practice in post-devolution Scotland in M. Keating (ed.) Scottish Social Democracy: Progressive Ideas for Public Policy, P.I.E. – Peter Lang: Brussels. She is also co-editor (with Sarah Armstrong) of the book Perspectives on Punishment: the Contours of Control, published in 2006 by Oxford University Press.

[top] David O'Mahony is a Reader at the Department of Law, Durham University and Director of the Centre for Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. He started his academic career as a researcher at Cambridge University where he completed a national evaluation of the youth justice system in England and Wales. In 1995 he was appointed as lecturer in Youth Justice at the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, at the School of Law, Queen’s University, Belfast and was promoted to senior lecturer in 2002.

He has conducted research projects for the European Union, the Department of Health, the Home Office, the Northern Ireland Office, the Probation Board for Northern Ireland and the British Council. David recently directed a research study with colleagues from Queen’s University, the University of Ulster, University of Sheffield and University of Wales examining restorative justice practices with young offenders in Northern Ireland.

He has published widely in the areas of youth crime and criminal justice. His teaching interests include the legal regulation of young people, crime and social control, and legal and social research methods. David was recently awarded a funded visiting research fellowship under the ‘Gender, Sexuality and the Family’ programme at Cornell Law School. He is a member of the editorial board for the journal 'Youth Justice', and a member of the Northern Ireland Crime Prevention Panel and the Northern Ireland Restorative Justice Working Group.

[top] Tapio Lappi-Seppälä is the director of the National Research Institute of Legal Policy (since 1995) and a professor of Criminology and Sociology of law at the University of Helsinki. He holds a long career as a senior legislative adviser in criminal law in the ministry of justice, including the membership of the Board in the Task Force for the Penal Law Reform in Finland (1989−1999), chairmanship of the working group preparing the general part of the criminal code (1993−1999), member of the committee preparing new prison law 1999-2001, and a vice chairman for the committee reforming the juvenile sanction system 2001-2003. He has taken actively part in international co-operation in criminal justice issues in the Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology, Council of Europe, and in the International Penal and Penitentiary Foundation (Vice President since 2005). He has published several books, research reports and articles in the field criminal law, criminology and penal policy.