Topics of Interest
Punishment
Prisons
Penal Policy
Background
John Pratt is Professor of Criminology and James Cook Research Fellow in Social Science at the Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
In 2010-11 he was a Fellow at the Straus Institute for Advanced Legal Studies and Justice, Faculty of Law, New York University 2010-2011.
He has published extensively on the history and sociology of punishment, including Punishment and Civilization (2002), and Penal Populism (2007).
His current research explains why Scandinavian and Anglophone societies have such different penal values. His 2008 two part British Journal of Criminology article - Scandinavian Exceptionalism in an Era of Penal Excess – received the Sir Leon Radzinowicz Memorial Award in 2009. His work has been variously translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and Japanese.