Criminology

Bill graduated with a BA in Law from Oxford University, where he studied at Worcester College. He has an MA in Criminal Justice from Brunel University and completed his PhD on police accountability in London (also at Brunel) in 1999. After working in the voluntary sector and in local government, Bill has held academic posts at Brunel University and the University of Cape Town. He arrived at Keele in 2001 as a Lecturer in Criminology and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2007.

Bill has long-standing research interests in police accountability and community policing in both the UK and South Africa. His recent work has been on crime, crime control and the discipline of criminology in post-apartheid South Africa with particular emphasis on the role of policy transfer in police reform, and the relationship between crime prevention and other aspects of social policy. After completing an ESRC-funded study of racially motivated violence and harassment in North Staffordshire, Bill has also been involved in adapting the methods used in that research for use by activists in South Africa.

Future plans include further work on the data generated by the North Staffordshire study and on the intersections between ‘race’ and crime in contemporary South Africa.