Bradley Read

Bradley Read is a part-time PhD Student and graduate of the Institute’s MSt course in Applied Criminology, Penology & Management (2022). He has spent the last 15 years working in the criminal justice sector. After 12 years working in front-line prison management roles across the southwest, he currently works as a senior advisor in Policing.

Bradley is taking a connected articles approach to his PhD Thesis. This thesis, entitled ‘Metamorphosis or mutation; explorations in the parole system in England and Wales’, connects three articles, concerning: the role of expert criminologists in the parole system and its development; the perceptions of prisoners subject to parole; and the observation and exploration of the oral hearing as it exists today. The three articles will explore the contextual and experiential nature of recent reforms to the parole system. They aim do this by involving key groups in both observation and interview: prisoners, criminologists, and Parole Board members. They situate systemic reforms within the wider social and criminological context, such as the prioritisation of actuarial risk assessment as a means to securing trust and confidence in parole board decision making, and explore how these reforms affect the current realities of the parole system. They will ask questions about how the system may function in the future, if the current trajectory is maintained. They will also explore whether the parole system today is the one we should have and what has happened to the founding principles of the system, whether they been lost through the myriad micro and macros changes of the last 50+ years, and why the answer to that question is important for our understanding of its role in the criminal justice system today.

Other criminological interests include criminal justice ethics, penology and penal theory, compliance and order in prisons, history and theory of punishment, community sentencing, history of crime, pains of imprisonment, alternatives to prison.