Past conferences and workshops

What's the point of criminal justice history?

15 October 2019
The Open University, Milton Keynes

Paul Lawrence, Asa Briggs Professor of History, delivered his inaugural lecture on how a historical approach to criminal justice contributes to contemporary understandings of crime and justice. He looked at, for example, whether we are more or less violent as a society than we were a century or two ago.

Follow this link to watch the recorded lecture online.

Professor Paul Lawrence has taught and researched in the History Department at The Open University since 1998. He is currently the Head of History and holds the Asa Briggs Chair in History. His research interests include all aspects of criminal justice history from c.1750 to the present.

Recovering the 19th Century Penal Landscape

6 July 2018
National Justice Museum, Nottingham
Smith Cooper Room

On 6 July 2018, at the National Justice Museum in Nottingham, a new resource developed by the Centre was launched: www. prisonhistory.org - a database of nineteenth-century prisons which contains critical information on the locations, size and archives of nearly 850 penal institutions.

We were delighted to host a number of eminent speakers with expertise on prisons past and present, including: Prof Sean McConville (Queen Mary University of London), Dr Paul Carter (The National Archives), Prof Barry Godfrey (University of Liverpool), Dr Helen Johnston (University of Hull), Dr Maryse Tennant (Canterbury Christ Church University), Aiofe O'Connor (Find My Past), Nina Champion (Prisoners' Education Trust) and Anita Dockley (Howard League for Penal Reform).

British Crime Historians Symposium

6-7 September 2012
The Open University, Milton Keynes

Following on from the success of the British Crime Historians Symposia at Leeds Metropolitan University in 2008 and Sheffield University in 2010, the Open University hosted the third symposium in Milton Keynes on September 6th and 7th, 2012.

All those working on the criminal justice history of the British Isles, or on other topics illuminated through criminal justice archives, were invited to participate. Papers covered a range of aspects of the history of criminal justice in the British Isles.

Proceedings included keynote papers from Clive Emsley and Edward Higgs, as well as panels of papers on methodologies and geographies of crime. The full programme can be downloaded here: Word (54KB) PDF (29KB)

Crime and Punishment Collections Network: Annual General Meeting

28 October 2011
Hosted by the ICHPCJ at The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes

In 2011, the International Centre for the History of Crime, Policing, and Justice hosted the AGM of the Crime and Punishment Collections Network.

The day started with the annual general meeting, during which members discussed the business of the network. This was followed by a training session after lunch on the mechanics and various uses of oral history projects. The afternoon presentations included:

Colin Hyde, from the East Midlands Oral History Archive, on putting together museum-based oral history projects;
Len Woodley on his project to record the history of ex-members of Buckinghamshire Constabulary and its constituent forces; and
Chris Alderman on the lessons learned from the oral history project carried out by the Friends of the Metropolitan Police Historical Collection, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
The Crime & Punishment Collections Network: Representing collections of crime & punishment, sharing knowledge, collections and insight into the subject. With over 30 members the network offers direct access to truly unique resources including newsletters, training and events

Third GERN-(Post)colonial policing workshop

Policing, surveillance and political transformations in the (former) Dutch and Belgium Empires
16-17 September 2010
KITLV, Leiden, The Netherlands

This workshop focused on the organization, methods and effects of policing, surveillance and incarceration in the (former) Dutch and Belgium empires, in the context of (post)colonial state formation, local political transformations and international security politics.

This was the third of a series of workshops that, over a period of two years, will look at aspects of policing in the European empires during the nineteenth and twentieth century. The conference will begin with a summary of the previous one in Paris.

Organising committee: Georgina Sinclair (Open University, Milton Keynes, UK), Chris Williams (Open University, Milton Keynes, UK), Emmanuel Blanchard
(GERN, Paris, France)

ICCCR Annual Conference - Ethnicity, Crime and Justice: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives<

8-9 June 2010
The Open University, Milton Keynes

This two day conference on 'Ethnicity, Crime and Justice; Contemporary and Historical Perspectives' brought historians and  criminologists together around common themes. The conference partly came out of a recent ESRC-funded research project on ethnicity, crime and justice in England in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the desire of Peter King and John Carter Wood, who are writing a book out of this research.

The conference began with overview papers - by two speakers who have recently written general texts in the area of research -one an historian and the other a criminologist. This was followed by sessions on a range of topics - policing, prisons, hate crime etc and by sessions looking more specifically at the treatment of black offenders/victims and at Irish and Jewish minorities and their experience of the criminal justice system in the past.

Speakers included Rene Levy, Martin Wiener, Coretta Phillips, Panikos Panayi, Colin Webster, Peter King, Paul Iganski, and John Carter Wood.

Policing and the Policed in the Postcolonial State

29-30 April 2010
Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London

The study of colonial and postcolonial policing has become an important issue within imperial and commonwealth, police and social history; criminology; sociology and political science. The key aim of this interdisciplinary workshop was to bring together academic as well as policy practitioners and implementers with a shared interest in the policing of the postcolonial state and its legacy upon the policing of Commonwealth countries.

Crime and Policing in Scottish Society

26 September 2009
Hosted by The Open University in Scotland (Stirling Management Centre, University of Stirling)

This conference explored the themes of crime and policing in Scottish society from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

Speakers included: Elizabeth Ewan, Rab Houston, Bill Knox, Peter King, Alison Brown, Tim Siddons, Suki Haider, Louise Jackson, Angela Bartie, David Smale, Alan Wilson, and Stuart MacKenzie.

Policing the British Empire in the 19th and 20th Centuries

16-17 September 2009
The Open University, Milton Keynes

Organised by Georgina Sinclair (The Open University) and Chris Williams (The Open University).

This is the first in the series of four workshops examining imperial policing within a European context. These workshops are being held in collaboration with the GERN.

CRIMPREV Final Conference: Deviance, Crime and Prevention in a Punitive Age

17-19 June 2009
The Open University, Milton Keynes

As part of a consortium from 10 European countries the ICCCR hosted the final in a series of conferences on Deviance, Crime and Prevention in Europe.

The aim of CRIMPREV was, over the course of three years, to provide an overall assessment of the current knowledge of crime, crime prevention and deviance in Europe. The CRIMPREV consortium was made up of 31 universities and research institutes spread across Europe from 10 European countries. The Open University's ICCCR (International Centre for Comparative Criminological Research) was one of four British university-based research groups in the consortium.

The Metropolis on Trial: An International Conference to Launch the Old Bailey Online, 1674-1913

10-12 July 2008
The Open University, Milton Keynes

Keynote Speakers: Carolyn Conley, Peter King, Allyson N. May, Robert Shoemaker, Martin Wiener, His Honour Judge Patrick Curran QC, and His Honour Judge Bruce Houlder QC

This conference was held to mark the launch of the complete online Proceedings of the Old Bailey and Central Criminal Court from 1674 to 1913, which will be available online from April/May 2008. This represents a major extension of the highly successful Old Bailey Proceedings 1674-1834. The new site contains fully searchable records of almost 200,000 trials held at London’s foremost criminal court between the 17th and 20th centuries, from the aftermath of the Great Fire to the eve of the Great War. The Proceedings are an unrivalled source of information about the lives and experiences of ordinary and extraordinary Londoners over two and a half centuries of the city’s history, for social, local and legal historians, genealogists, students and teachers, and all those simply interested in London’s past. The conference covered a varied range of historical subjects encompassed in the Proceedings, and will also include panels focusing on using the Proceedings as a teaching resource and on the creation and implications of digital history.

Organised by: Clive Emsley (The Open University), Tim Hitchcock (University of Hertfordshire) and Robert Shoemaker (University of Sheffield).

Heritage and History of the UK Criminal Justice System

18 June 2004
The Open University, Milton Keynes

Organiser: Chris A Williams
Speakers included: Clive Emsley (Open University), Hugh Forrester (Curator, The Police Museum, Belfast), Martyn Lockwood (Essex Police Museum), Kelvin Smith (National Archives, Kew), Alice Stewart (Records Manager, Strathclyde Police), Guy Purdey (South East Museums, Libraries and Archives Council), Bev Baker (Galleries of Justice, Nottingham)

The ‘bobby’ has long been extolled as one of Britain's crowning glories, yet many police and criminal justice institutions in the UK are surprisingly negligent with their heritage. Museums such as the award-winning Galleries of Justice in Nottingham have demonstrated that there is a market for criminal justice history. Around the country are many fine police and prison museums, but most suffer from having very little committed long-term support.

This one-day conference at the Open University in Milton Keynes provided an opportunity to discuss a wide variety of issues in this field. Rather than focus on the findings of academic research, it was intended to be of practical use to those working in the field, including museum curators, archivists, police record management officers, academics researching in the area, and interested members of the public.

The proceedings of this conference were published as Chris A. Williams, ed. Giving the past a future: preserving the heritage of the UK's Criminal Justice System. (London, Francis Boutle, 2004).