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Professor Fergus McNeill

Published:

University of Glasgow

  1. Focus on reintegration as the primary goal
  2. Recognise people in terms of their worth and potential
  3. Adopt a dialogical approach
In the long term we secure reductions in risk when we integrate people effectively into society

Biography

Fergus McNeill is Professor of Criminology and Social Work at the University of Glasgow where he works in the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research and in Sociology. Prior to becoming an academic in 1998, Fergus worked for a decade in residential drug rehabilitation and as a criminal justice social worker.

His many research projects and publications have examined institutions, cultures and practices of punishment and rehabilitation and their alternatives. Most recently, between 2017-21, Fergus led ‘Distant Voices: Coming Home’, a major, multi-partner Economic and Social Research Council/Arts and Humanities Research Council project which explored re-integration after punishment through creative practices and research methods.

His most recent books include Reimagining Rehabilitation: Beyond the Individual (with Lol Burke and Steve Collett) and Pervasive Punishment: Making sense of mass supervision (the winner of the European Society of Criminology’s Book Prize 2021).

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