Stuart Waiton

I’m a Sociology and Criminology lecturer. I also write for several newspapers on issues associated with the criminalisation and over-regulation of everyday life.

My research interests include the politics of antisocial behaviour, the changing nature of politics beyond left and right and the construction of ‘hate crime’. I’m also interested in early intervention and its role in crime-related social policy and the ‘policing’ of families. This and other work relates to ideas about ‘governing vulnerability’ within a ‘therapeutic culture’. Finally, I am interested in risk/fear and the ideas of moral and amoral panics.

I am the author of Scared of the Kids, and The Politics of Antisocial Behaviour: Amoral Panics. My most recent book is Snobs’ Law: Criminalising Football Fans in an Age of Intolerance.

Dr Waiton teaches largely on the Criminological Studies course exploring issues to do with modern forms of criminalisation. He also teaches postgraduate students carrying out the Masters by Research and is available for PhD supervision.

The specific modules are

CRM101 Crime and Punishment - how to understand how crime is constructed and how language/behaviour is criminalised.

CRM301 Contemporary Criminological Theory - Governing crime, gender and crime and risk/fear and crime.

CRM401 Contemporary Issues in Criminological Research explores the rise of the victim of crime within an understanding of the 'therapeutic culture' and looks at hate crime, restorative justice and the growing policing of antisocial behaviour.

Research interests include:

The political and therapeutic way in which crime and the issue of antisocial behaviour have developed in the UK. In particular the way in which 'vulnerability' and the construction of it have impacted upon crime and society.

Moral Panics - but more specifically amoral panics in society.

The changing nature of politics beyond left and right and the impact this has upon crime as a socially constructed problem: With particular interest in the construction of 'hate crime'.

The history of early intervention and its emerging centrality to crime related social policy.