Rod Morgan
Rodney Emrys Morgan is Professor Emeritus, University of Bristol and Visiting Professor at the University of Sussex. He is the former chair of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales and prior to that was HM Chief Inspector of Probation for England and Wales.
He is the author of many books and articles on criminal justice and penal policy and was co-editor of the influential 'Oxford Handbook of Criminology'. He is a regular advisor to Amnesty International and the Council of Europe on custodial conditions and standards with particular reference to the prevention of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, being co-author of the Council of Europe's official guide to the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture. He frequently acts as an expert witness in extradition proceedings in which there is a possible breach of Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Fundamental Human Rights, which forbids torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
He has held almost every post it is possible to hold part-time within the criminal justice system, locally, nationally and internationally. He was an Assessor to Lord Justice Woolf's Inquiry into the 1990 prison disturbances, was until 2011 a Ministry of Justice-appointed advisor to the criminal justice inspectorates for England and Wales and is current;y a member of the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel.
He has been or is currently a trustee of or advisor to several organisations concerned with criminal justice research and policy or working with young people in trouble. He was a member of the Centre for Social Justice Working Parties on imprisonment and youth justice and was a member of the academic advisory board for Cumberland Lodge, Windsor.
He has been a regular broadcaster, speaker and writer on all the above topics.
His other interests include walking, sailing and live music. He was Chairman of the Board of Trustees for Bath Philharmonia and has been a Trustee on the Bath Festivals Board.
He has been awarded honorary degrees by the Universities of Bath and the West of England.
His Time as Chairman of the Youth Justice Board
Morgan took up office as Chairman of the YJB in April 2004 following the departure of the founder Chairman, Lord Warner, in summer 2003 and the temporary interregnum of Sir Charles Pollard. He demonstrated his conspicuous independence by questioning, mostly behind the scenes but occasionally in public, the wisdom of the Government's anti-social behaviour policy as it impacted youth. He also made it clear that he considered his role to include representing to Government the front-line operational experience of youth offending team practitioners and argued that the YJB should adopt a less directive and a more supportive stance than hitherto. He argued that the strength of the reformed youth justice system lay in the YOTs being devolved, multi-agency, locally accountable agencies. He also argued strongly for less reliance by the courts on custody for children and young people. In January 2007 Morgan resigned his office on the grounds that the Government was doing insufficient to reverse two trends about which he was unhappy: the greatly increased criminalisation of children and young people; and the continuing growth in the number of children and young people in custody. Since his departure from the Board Morgan has critically described both trends in some detail in newspaper articles, broadcasts and in articles and contributions to books and has welcomed the marked reversal of both trends since 2008.
His Time as HM Chief Inspector of Probation
Morgan became the first Chief Inspector of Probation not to have a career background in probation. He oversaw the transition from an inspectorate which functioned as an arm of the Home Office in relation to more or less autonomous, local probation services, to an independent inspectorate of a national probation service managed by a National Probation Directorate within the Home Office. He argued for and introduced the joint inspection of youth offending teams, arrangements which were to be led by HM Inspectorate of Probation. In his annual reports he expressed doubts about placing too much reliance on cognitive behavioural programmes for offenders and argued against the 'sentencing drift' which he maintained was serving to 'silt up' probation caseloads. He suggested that approximately one third of all offenders being supervised by the Probation Service did not need the attention of the Service and in former times would have been dealt with by less intrusive methods. In 2003-4 he chaired the Criminal Justice Chief Inspectors Group yet argued publicly for the amalgamation of the five criminal justice inspectorates to form a single Criminal Justice Inspectorate. This idea was pursued by the Government but in 2006 abandoned in the face of Parliamentary opposition. He has been sharply critical of the break up of the Probation Service and its substantial privatisation.
Published work includes:
1976 '' A Taste of Prison: a Study of Trial and Remand Prisoners, London: Routledge,
1979 Crisis in the Prisons: the Way Out, University of Southampton,.
1979 Formulating Penal Policy: the Future of the Advisory Council on the Penal System, London: NACRO.
1980 The Future of the Prison System, Farnborough: Gower.
1984 Following Scarman: A Survey of Police Community Consultation Arrangements in Provincial Police Authorities in England and Wales May, 1984 Centre for the Analysis of Social Policy, University of Bath.
1985 Prisons and Accountability: Opening up a Closed World, London: Tavistock.
1985 Setting the P.A.C.E.: Police Community Consultation Arrangements in England and Wales, Centre for the Analysis of Social Policy, University of Bath.
1989 The Perrie Lectures 1988, Remands in Custody: problems and prospects, London: Home Office, Prison Department
1989 Behind the Front Counter: Lay Visitors to Police Stations, Bath/Bristol Centre for Criminal Justice Papers No 1.
1989 Coming to Terms with Policing: questions of policy, London: Routledge.
1990 Lay Visitors to Police Stations: Report to the Home Office, Bristol Centre for Criminal Justice.
1990 Policing and Crime Prevention: Papers from the British Criminology Conference 1989, Bristol Centre for Criminal Justice.
1990 The Right to Silence Debate, Bristol Centre for Criminal Justice.
1991 Report of an Experiment in 13 Prisons Using Magistrates' Court Clerks to Clerks Boards of Visitors Adjudications, Prison Service, Home Office.
1993 Sex Offenders: A Framework for the Evaluation of Community-Based Treatment, London: Home Office Research and Planning Unit.
1993 Lay Visitors to Police Stations: An Update, Bristol: Centre for Criminal Justice/National Association for Lay Visitors.
1994 The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
1995 The Politics of Sentencing Reform, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1995 Making Consultation Work: A Handbook for those involved in police community consultation arrangements, London: Police Foundation.
1997 The Future of Policing, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1997 The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
1998 Preventing Torture: A Study of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
1998 Evaluation of the 'One Stop Shop' and Victim Statement Pilot Projects, Home Office, Research Development and Statistics Directorate.
1999 Crime Unlimited? Questions for the New Millennium, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
1999 An Assessment of the Admissibility and Sufficiency of Evidence in Child Abuse Prosecutions, London: Home Office.
1999 Protecting Prisoners: The Standards of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture in Context, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1999 The Uses to which Victim Statements are put, London: Home Office.
2000 The Judiciary in the Magistrates Courts, London: LCD/Home Office.
2001 Public Attitudes to The Sentencing of Domestic Burglary, London: Home Office/Sentencing Advisory Panel.
2001 Public Knowledge and Attitudes to Criminal Justice and Sentencing, London: Home Office.
2001 Combating Torture in Europe, Strasbourg: Council of Europe Combattre la torture en Europe, Strasbourg: Council of Europe; and into Spanish Combattere la tortura nei luoghi de detenzione in Europa, Strasbourg: Council of Europe.
2002 The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 3rd Edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
2002 CPT Standards regarding prisoners, Geneva: Association for Prevention of Torture.
2002 the CPT's Standards on Police and Pre-trial custody, Geneva: Association for Prevention of Torture.
2004 Report of an Inquiry into the Death of PC Gerald Walker at the hands of Mr David Parfitt, HM Inspectorate of Probation, London: HMIP.
2006 Young People and Crime: Improving Provision for Children Who Offend, London: Karnac.
2007 Handbook of Probation, Cullompton: Willan.
2007 Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 4th Ed, Oxford: OUP
2008 Summary Justice: Fast – but Fair?, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, King's College, London.
2009 Too Much To Ask? The Leaps and Bounds Story, London: Solomon White/Arts Council England.
2010 On the question of Devolution of Youth Justice Responsibilities, Cardiff: Welsh Assembly Government.
2012 Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 5th Ed, Oxford: OUP
2017 'Preventing Torture in Europe' Council of Europe: Strasbourg.
Current Work
Together with Stephen Shute of the University of Sussex he holds a British Academy award to undertake research on 'Inspection and Accountability of Criminal Justice Services' on which a book is planned to be published by OUP.
Leave those kids alone, New Statesman, Published 21 June 2010