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Roger Hood was formerly Director of the Centre for Criminological Research and is now Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College.

Professor Hood obtained his BSc in Sociology from the London School of Economics in 1957; his PhD from Cambridge University in 1963; and DCL from Oxford University in 1999. He was a Research Officer at the LSE from 1961-63, then Lecturer in Social Administration at Durham University, and Assistant Director of Research and Director of Post-Graduate Studies at the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge from 1967-1973 and Fellow of Clare Hall. In 1973 he came to Oxford as the University Reader in Criminology and head of the Penal Research Unit, which became the Centre for Criminological Research in 1976. In 1996 he was given the title of Professor of Criminology.

He has been a member of the Parole Board for England and Wales, of the Judicial Studies Board and of the Departmental Committee to Review the Parole System (1987-88). He has also been consultant to the United Nations on the death penalty and was responsible for the UN Secretary General's reports on the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Quinquennial Surveys of Capital Punishment in 1995, 2000-2001 and 2004-2005. From 1987-89 he was President of the British Society of Criminology. He is a member of the Foreign Secretary's Death Penalty Panel; has taken part in the UK/China Human Rights Dialogues and the UE/China Human Rights Seminars; is consultant on the death penalty to the Great Britain-China Centre; and a Trustee of the Grendon Friends Trust and The Death Penalty Project.

He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Virginia Law School in 1980-82, 1984-90, and since 2005, and Adjunct Professor at City University Hong Kong since 2008, where he teaches an intensive short course on international perspectives on the death penalty. In 1986 he received the Sellin-Glueck Award from the American Society of Criminology for 'Distinguished Contributions to Criminology'; in 1992 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy; and in 1995 was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) 'for services to the study of criminology'; and in 2000 he was appointed an honorary Queen's Counsel. He was sub-Warden of All Souls College from 1994-96, and was College Steward from 1993-2003. From October 2003 to May 2004 he was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong. In 2003, a Festschrift entitled The Criminological Foundations of Penal Policy (edited by Lucia Zedner and Andrew Ashworth) was published by Oxford University Press to mark his retirement.

His recent research has had three main strands: the death penalty; race and sentencing; and parole. The fourth edition of his book The Death Penalty: a Worldwide Perspective (with Carolyn Hoyle) was published by Oxford University Press in April 2008.

Main publications

Books and reports

Sentencing in Magistrates' Courts, London: Stevens (1962)

Borstal Re-Assessed, London Heinemann Educational Books (1965)

Homeless Borstal Boys, Occasional Papers in Social Administration, No 18, London, G.Bell and Sons (1966)

Key Issues in Criminology (with Richard Sparks), London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, (1970)

Sentencing the Motoring Offender, London: Heinemann Educational Books (1972)

(Editor) Crime, Criminology and Public Policy: essays in honour of Sir Leon Radzinowicz London: Heinemann Educational Books (1974)

A History of English Criminal Law and its Administration, vol. 5,The Emergence of Penal Policy (with Sir Leon Radzinowicz) London: Stevens (1986) and paperback Oxford University Press (1990)

Race and Sentencing Oxford University Press (1992)

The Death Penalty: a World-wide Perspective, Oxford University Press (1st ed. 1988, 4th ed. with Carolyn Hoyle 2008)

The Parole System as Work: A study of risk based decision-making (with Stephen Shute), Home Office Research Study No 202 (2000)

Difference or Discrimination? Ethnic Minorities in the Youth Justice System (with Martina Feilzer), London: Youth Justice Board 2004)

A Fair Hearing? Ethnic Minorities in the Criminal Courts (with Stephen Shute and Florence Seemungal), Collompton, Devon: Willan Publishing (2005)

A Rare and Arbitrary Fate. Conviction for Murder, the Mandatory Death Penalty and the Reality of Homicide in Trinidad and Tobago (with Florence Seemungal) Oxford: Centre for Criminology (2006).

Recent Articles

'Capital Punishment' in M. Tonry (ed.), The Handbook of Criminology, New York: Oxford University Press (1998)

'Three Generations: Oral Testimonies on Crime and Social Change in London's East End' (with Kate Joyce), British Journal of Criminology, vol. 39 (1) (1999)

'On the importance of abolishing the death penalty'. Introduction to The Death Penalty: Abolition in Europe, Council of Europe Publishing (1999)

Introduction to The Death Penalty – Beyond Abolition, Council of Europe, (2004)

'Crime Sentencing and Punishment' (with Andrew Roddam) in A.H. Halsey with Josephine Webb (eds), Twentieth Century British Social Trends, London: Palgrave Macmillan (2000)

'Penal Policy and Criminological Challenges in the New Millennium', Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, Vol 43(1) (2001)

'Capital Punishment: a global perspective' Punishment and Society, vol. 3(3) (2001)

'Sex Offenders Emerging from Long-term Imprisonment: A study of their long-term reconviction rates and of Parole Board members' judgements of their risk' (with S. Shute, M. Feilzer and A. Wilcox), British Journal of Criminology, vol. 42(2) (2002)

'Hermann Mannheim and Max Grünhut', in J. Beatson and R. Zimmermann (eds.) Jurists Uprooted. German Speaking Émigré Lawyers in Twentieth Century Britain, Oxford University Press (2004), (also in British Journal of Criminology, vol. 44(4) (2004)

'At Death’s Door', China Review, Issue 33 (Summer 2005)

'The enigma of the ‘most serious’ offences', Center for Human Rights and Global Justice Working Paper Extrajudicial Studies series, Number 9, 2006, at http:www.nyuhr.org/docs/WPS_NYU_CHRGJ_Hoodpdf

‘A Rare and Arbitrary Fate: Being Mandatorily Sentenced to Death in Trinidad and Tobago’ (with Florence Seemungal), Amicus Journal. Issue 17, (2007)

‘Attacking the Death Penalty in the Anglophone Caribbean: A Criminological Contribution’ in H. Mueller-Dietz et al.(eds.), Festschrift fuer Heike Jung, Baden-Baden: Nomos (2007)

‘The Death Penalty: The Movement toward Worldwide Abolition’, in S.G. Shoham, O. Beck and M. Kett (eds.) International Handbook of Penology and Criminal Justice, Boca Raton Fl: CRC Press (2008)

‘Capital Punishment: the Commonwealth in World Perspective’ The Commonwealth Lawyer, vol 17(3) 2008

‘Introduction’ to Jon Yorke (ed.) Against the Death Penalty: International Initiatives and Implications, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2008