Professor Kate Moss
My main research interest is crime reduction and the law. Specifically my work has centred on two areas;
first, the debate about how legislation surrounds and drives the crime reduction agenda; and second, the balance between the need for security and the right to liberty.
Aside from my academic interests I have always been committed to applied research which has the potential to change lives and to drive policy for the betterment of society. My applied research has included the creation of a burglary risk index in Nottingham; the impact of the crime reductive effects of s17 Crime and Disorder Act 1998; and evaluations of Specialist Domestic Violence Courts. I am currently project manager for a two year EU funded research into women who sleep rough in 5 European countries.
I moved to the School of Law, Social Science and Communications at Wolverhampton University as a Reader in Law in 2007 and gained my professorial title in July 2010.
Between 2001 – 2007 I was based in the 5*A Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University where I acted as Programme Director for the MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice from 2001-2004.
My academic background prior to this began in 1988 when I graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University with an LLB(Hons) degree in Law. I then went to study at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge where I obtained an M.Phil in Criminology in 1989.
I was appointed Lecturer at the Law School, Staffordshire University in January 1990 where, aside from my research and teaching commitments, I training as a harassment and bullying network advisor and a Mental Health Review Tribunal lay panel member. I introduced to the Law School a student mentoring scheme, initiated the School’s policy on the recruitment of access students and students with disabilities and gained the Professional Development Diploma in 2000.
In 1993 I registered part time at Manchester University for a PhD with Professor Ken Pease in the [then] Department of Social Policy. The research for this thesis was carried out in medium secure psychiatric facilities where I had access to confidential patient files and locked wards. I completed this work in 1997 and had it later published in book form. My active research and publication profile dates from that time.
I was appointed to the Board of Trustees for the Crime Reduction Inititative in December 2010. CRI is a London based charity which delivers services across England and Wales.
I have been a local councillor, am a member of the Board of Trustees for the Den Youth Cafe - a charity for young people in Stone, Staffordshire - and I am a founder member of the Stone Music and Arts Festival Society.
first, the debate about how legislation surrounds and drives the crime reduction agenda; and second, the balance between the need for security and the right to liberty.
Aside from my academic interests I have always been committed to applied research which has the potential to change lives and to drive policy for the betterment of society. My applied research has included the creation of a burglary risk index in Nottingham; the impact of the crime reductive effects of s17 Crime and Disorder Act 1998; and evaluations of Specialist Domestic Violence Courts. I am currently project manager for a two year EU funded research into women who sleep rough in 5 European countries.
I moved to the School of Law, Social Science and Communications at Wolverhampton University as a Reader in Law in 2007 and gained my professorial title in July 2010.
Between 2001 – 2007 I was based in the 5*A Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University where I acted as Programme Director for the MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice from 2001-2004.
My academic background prior to this began in 1988 when I graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University with an LLB(Hons) degree in Law. I then went to study at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge where I obtained an M.Phil in Criminology in 1989.
I was appointed Lecturer at the Law School, Staffordshire University in January 1990 where, aside from my research and teaching commitments, I training as a harassment and bullying network advisor and a Mental Health Review Tribunal lay panel member. I introduced to the Law School a student mentoring scheme, initiated the School’s policy on the recruitment of access students and students with disabilities and gained the Professional Development Diploma in 2000.
In 1993 I registered part time at Manchester University for a PhD with Professor Ken Pease in the [then] Department of Social Policy. The research for this thesis was carried out in medium secure psychiatric facilities where I had access to confidential patient files and locked wards. I completed this work in 1997 and had it later published in book form. My active research and publication profile dates from that time.
I was appointed to the Board of Trustees for the Crime Reduction Inititative in December 2010. CRI is a London based charity which delivers services across England and Wales.
I have been a local councillor, am a member of the Board of Trustees for the Den Youth Cafe - a charity for young people in Stone, Staffordshire - and I am a founder member of the Stone Music and Arts Festival Society.
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Books by Professor Kate Moss
“If .... anyone had predicted that a generation later Guantánamo Bay would be filled with untried people and flights of extraordinary rendition exported prisoners to places convenient for their torture, they would have been thought insane. That the UK Parliament is now haggling not about the principle of detention without trial but how many weeks and months such detention would be allowed to last, is breathtaking.”
In Security and Liberty: Restriction by Stealth (2009) I dealt with a range of aspects of the creeping power of the executive, some less dramatic than others, but all of them important elements of what I consider to be burgeoning fear-driven law and practice. I questioned the heavy emphasis by New Labour on using legislation to facilitate crime control which has been passed with relatively little academic evaluation and the restrictions imposed on people by the criminalising of behaviour that in many cases has long been held to be reasonable. My point is that more laws do not make crime less likely, indeed they can make it more common. For me, crime control has lost direction; legislation has been based on perceived rather than real risks. . As a consequence, what has emerged is a legislative framework that is heavy handed and disproportionate. It is also counterproductive and beyond being unnecessary and an infringement of basic human rights, it will work in the interests of offenders, not least terrorists.
Since the events of September 2001 it seems to me that we are now living in a world that is characterised by fear and subsequently obsessed with security. The success of those attacks, beyond the immediate tragic loss of life, lies primarily in engendering a climate of ‘risk aversion’ in which whole groups of people are placed under suspicion, thus accelerating their alienation and possible radicalisation. A decade ago it might have been unthinkable for anyone involved in crime reduction within the democratic world to imagine that we could see the demise of some of our basic democratic principles. Who would have thought that the notion of habeas corpus – traceable to the 13th century - and the concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ would be so easily suspended and that people would be held without trial, sometimes for years both here in the UK and in the US – the self-proclaimed land of the free. More surprising perhaps is that fact that relatively few people appear to be speaking out about these developments, including academics that arguably ought to be interested in them. It is somewhat ironic that similar developments in other countries such as Iraq, Libya and Saudi Arabia have received huge comment, but arguably, when Britain and the US perpetrate similar behaviour in respect of innocent people, many seem to turn a blind eye or accept the justification which is often given for it; that it is part of the ‘war against terror.’
It seems dangerous for any of us to turn a blind eye to these developments, particularly those of us whose professional obligation ought to be speaking out against them. The systematic disintegration of various human rights and personal freedoms has happened before. We have only to remind ourselves of some of the genocides of the 20th century in Germany and Rwanda, and currently that in Darfur – to name but a few. Let’s not forget also the segregation of blacks and whites in America and the McCarthy witch hunts. In all of these cases, certain groups of people were persistently attacked purely on the basis of their religious, ethnic or political beliefs. It is not as if we do not have experience of this historically, but to my thinking, it seems that the state’s potential to repress is now much wider.
Generating new insights on crime reduction this study asks, is legislating to reduce crime really a good idea, or are there better ways of doing it and if so, what are these and why are they better? Why might it be wrong to over-legislate and what sort of societies could be produced from a propensity to over-legislate?
The first volume in the collection (‘Approaches to Reduction’) brings together the best research on the different approaches to crime reduction, including its classification and theory, and ideas of what is preventable. The work gathered here also includes criticisms of crime reduction, not least research around the phenomena of displacement and sustainability.
Volume II (‘Motivation of the Criminal Inclination’) collects the most important work on issues of crime reduction, particularly those concerned with what one thinker has described as ‘structure and psyche’. The scholarship in this volume draws both on the structural perspective (which emphasizes the view that reduction is achievable only through economic and social change, especially by ameliorating inequality or levels of social exclusion), and the ‘psyche’ approach (which regards crime principally as a product of the human spirit and seeks to change criminal inclination and activity by policies of, for example, deterrence, incapacitation, and reform).
The notion of situational crime reduction has been a particularly active area of research in recent years. But the idea that changes to the social and physical settings in which crime may occur can reduce its frequency or impact is far from uncontroversial. Volume III (‘Situational Crime Reduction’) assembles the best thinking in this area tackling, for example, ethical dilemmas about the impact of some reduction strategies on our freedom and privacy rights, as well as the difficult and profound implications that arise from the increasing extent to which crime reduction has become the de facto responsibility of private rather than state organizations.
The final volume in the collection (‘Crime Prevention in Action’) gathers together the best cutting-edge work to highlight key examples of empirical crime reduction research in action. It includes research focusing on: the need to incentivize crime reduction to persuade more people to take responsibility for reducing a greater variety of crime; the effects of apparently subtle strategies (such as changes to street lighting); and anticipatory changes (whereby crime seems to reduce in advance of reduction initiatives). Volume IV also includes assessments of the future developments in the field.
Crime Reduction is fully indexed and includes a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. An essential reference collection, it is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and practitioners as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.
Providing a sustained analysis, this ground-breaking book considers the social policy, politics and legislation that surround and drive the crime reduction agenda. It analyzes:
•the creation of 'safe environments' through Town and Country Planning legislation
•the role of local authorities in crime reduction initiatives
•the nature of drug policy, paedophilia legislation and programs to control mental disorder crime.
Bringing together the work of internationally renowned experts in this field, this book will prove very useful to students of criminology and sociology, as well as crime prevention and reduction practitioners, police officers and community safety partnership professionals.
Papers by Professor Kate Moss
Research Updates by Professor Kate Moss
“If .... anyone had predicted that a generation later Guantánamo Bay would be filled with untried people and flights of extraordinary rendition exported prisoners to places convenient for their torture, they would have been thought insane. That the UK Parliament is now haggling not about the principle of detention without trial but how many weeks and months such detention would be allowed to last, is breathtaking.”
In Security and Liberty: Restriction by Stealth (2009) I dealt with a range of aspects of the creeping power of the executive, some less dramatic than others, but all of them important elements of what I consider to be burgeoning fear-driven law and practice. I questioned the heavy emphasis by New Labour on using legislation to facilitate crime control which has been passed with relatively little academic evaluation and the restrictions imposed on people by the criminalising of behaviour that in many cases has long been held to be reasonable. My point is that more laws do not make crime less likely, indeed they can make it more common. For me, crime control has lost direction; legislation has been based on perceived rather than real risks. . As a consequence, what has emerged is a legislative framework that is heavy handed and disproportionate. It is also counterproductive and beyond being unnecessary and an infringement of basic human rights, it will work in the interests of offenders, not least terrorists.
Since the events of September 2001 it seems to me that we are now living in a world that is characterised by fear and subsequently obsessed with security. The success of those attacks, beyond the immediate tragic loss of life, lies primarily in engendering a climate of ‘risk aversion’ in which whole groups of people are placed under suspicion, thus accelerating their alienation and possible radicalisation. A decade ago it might have been unthinkable for anyone involved in crime reduction within the democratic world to imagine that we could see the demise of some of our basic democratic principles. Who would have thought that the notion of habeas corpus – traceable to the 13th century - and the concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ would be so easily suspended and that people would be held without trial, sometimes for years both here in the UK and in the US – the self-proclaimed land of the free. More surprising perhaps is that fact that relatively few people appear to be speaking out about these developments, including academics that arguably ought to be interested in them. It is somewhat ironic that similar developments in other countries such as Iraq, Libya and Saudi Arabia have received huge comment, but arguably, when Britain and the US perpetrate similar behaviour in respect of innocent people, many seem to turn a blind eye or accept the justification which is often given for it; that it is part of the ‘war against terror.’
It seems dangerous for any of us to turn a blind eye to these developments, particularly those of us whose professional obligation ought to be speaking out against them. The systematic disintegration of various human rights and personal freedoms has happened before. We have only to remind ourselves of some of the genocides of the 20th century in Germany and Rwanda, and currently that in Darfur – to name but a few. Let’s not forget also the segregation of blacks and whites in America and the McCarthy witch hunts. In all of these cases, certain groups of people were persistently attacked purely on the basis of their religious, ethnic or political beliefs. It is not as if we do not have experience of this historically, but to my thinking, it seems that the state’s potential to repress is now much wider.
Generating new insights on crime reduction this study asks, is legislating to reduce crime really a good idea, or are there better ways of doing it and if so, what are these and why are they better? Why might it be wrong to over-legislate and what sort of societies could be produced from a propensity to over-legislate?
The first volume in the collection (‘Approaches to Reduction’) brings together the best research on the different approaches to crime reduction, including its classification and theory, and ideas of what is preventable. The work gathered here also includes criticisms of crime reduction, not least research around the phenomena of displacement and sustainability.
Volume II (‘Motivation of the Criminal Inclination’) collects the most important work on issues of crime reduction, particularly those concerned with what one thinker has described as ‘structure and psyche’. The scholarship in this volume draws both on the structural perspective (which emphasizes the view that reduction is achievable only through economic and social change, especially by ameliorating inequality or levels of social exclusion), and the ‘psyche’ approach (which regards crime principally as a product of the human spirit and seeks to change criminal inclination and activity by policies of, for example, deterrence, incapacitation, and reform).
The notion of situational crime reduction has been a particularly active area of research in recent years. But the idea that changes to the social and physical settings in which crime may occur can reduce its frequency or impact is far from uncontroversial. Volume III (‘Situational Crime Reduction’) assembles the best thinking in this area tackling, for example, ethical dilemmas about the impact of some reduction strategies on our freedom and privacy rights, as well as the difficult and profound implications that arise from the increasing extent to which crime reduction has become the de facto responsibility of private rather than state organizations.
The final volume in the collection (‘Crime Prevention in Action’) gathers together the best cutting-edge work to highlight key examples of empirical crime reduction research in action. It includes research focusing on: the need to incentivize crime reduction to persuade more people to take responsibility for reducing a greater variety of crime; the effects of apparently subtle strategies (such as changes to street lighting); and anticipatory changes (whereby crime seems to reduce in advance of reduction initiatives). Volume IV also includes assessments of the future developments in the field.
Crime Reduction is fully indexed and includes a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. An essential reference collection, it is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and practitioners as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.
Providing a sustained analysis, this ground-breaking book considers the social policy, politics and legislation that surround and drive the crime reduction agenda. It analyzes:
•the creation of 'safe environments' through Town and Country Planning legislation
•the role of local authorities in crime reduction initiatives
•the nature of drug policy, paedophilia legislation and programs to control mental disorder crime.
Bringing together the work of internationally renowned experts in this field, this book will prove very useful to students of criminology and sociology, as well as crime prevention and reduction practitioners, police officers and community safety partnership professionals.