Charting New Paths in Probation and Desistance: Fergus McNeill’s Reflections for Future Scholars

Abstract

Bio: Fergus McNeill is Professor of Criminology and Social Work at the University of Glasgow. Prior to becoming an academic in 1998, Fergus worked for a decade in residential drug rehabilitation and as a criminal justice social worker. His research projects and publications have focused mainly on institutions, cultures and practices of punishment, rehabilitation and reintegration. As well exploring how increasingly knowledge about desistance from crime might re-shape rehabilitation and reintegration (both within and beyond criminal justice), Fergus’s work has increasingly used creative and ethnographic methods to better understand how criminal justice is experienced, both by those subject to it and by those whose job is to try to realise it in practice. His 2018 book, ‘Pervasive Punishment: Making sense of mass supervision’, was the winner of the European Society of Criminology’s book prize. His next book co-edited with Mary Corcoran and Beth Weaver), ‘Generative Justice: Beyond crime and punishment’, is due for publication by Bristol University Press in January 2026.