Sophie Ellis

I am a fourth year PhD student, supervised by Professor Ben Crewe. My PhD explores the history of psychological practices in English prisons, and the sociology of prison psychologists.

Before arriving at Cambridge, I spent nine years working in forensic psychological practice for the Prison Service. I conducted assessments of risk, need and ability, and delivered a range of psychological interventions. Latterly I specialised in working with men convicted of serious and repetitive violence. Much of my work was with men serving indeterminate sentences.

During my time in the Prison Service, I conducted research on the psychosocial characteristics of men who behaved violently in custody, and desisted over the course of their sentence. I was interested in how people managed to desist in an environment that typically has elevated levels of violence. This MSc thesis was later published as a paper entitled ‘Factors associated with desistance from violence in prison’.

In 2017, I moved to a Research Assistant post at the Institute of Criminology. For two years, I worked on the Families and Imprisonment Research (FAIR) Study: a nine-year mixed methods longitudinal study of imprisoned fathers, their partners and their children. I published a methodological paper exploring the role of time and space in longitudinal participant retention, and co-authored an evidence review for criminal justice charity Clinks, on supporting the families of people in prison and on probation. Other co-authored publications are listed below.

In 2019, I began my PhD with the Prisons Research Centre, exploring applied psychology practice in prisons and the social and moral lives of prison psychologists. During the course of the study I interviewed 104 psychologists with experience spanning nearly 60 years of practice in English prisons. I am particularly interested in the social and moral climate of prison-based psychology, the socialisation process that prison psychologists undergo, how psychology contributes to the broader moral norms of imprisonment, and how psychologists make complex value-based decisions. I am presently writing up my thesis.

Between September 2022 and February 2023, I held a research internship at the Prison Reform Trust. I completed a consultancy project consulting prisoners serving indefinite sentences, about their views and experiences of completing psychologically-based offending behaviour programmes. A report is currently being finalised.

I have a significant interest in indeterminate sentencing. I have been active in campaigning work to overturn the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence; a sentence given out between 2005 and 2012 in England and Wales before being abolished by the European Court of Human Rights, but not retrospectively, leaving around 6,000 people still serving it. I have written several evidence summaries to support parliamentary activity on this issue, and loosely coordinate collective activity by academics and practitioners seeking to influence in this area.

More broadly, I am interested in the points of intersection between the ‘psy’ disciplines and imprisonment, and the impact of these intersections on the imprisonment-related experiences of staff and prisoners, as well as the role of psychology in prison-related policymaking. I coordinate a network called Critical Conversations in Forensic Psychology, which aims to unite forensic psychologists with their crime-interested neighbours in other disciplines, to foster a socio-critical approach to psychological practice which is fully engaged with matters of power, politics and policy.