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  1. Biography

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Professor Lesley McAra

Published:

University of Edinburgh

  1. Pay attention to key transitional moments
  2. Recognise potential mental health issues
  3. Think about the role and impact of fathers
Our findings show that the care leavers who were the most vulnerable and traumatised – those who actually had the highest numbers of adverse childhood experiences – they were the ones who were most likely to transition from the youth to the adult criminal justice system. 

Biography (Back to top)

Lesley McAra is Professor of Penology in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh. She began her career as a researcher in the Scottish Office where she led a major programme of research evaluating social work criminal justice services. She joined the University of Edinburgh in 1995 as Lecturer in Criminology, was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2005, and to the Chair of Penology in 2009. In 2018, Lesley was elected as President of the European Society of Criminology and, following her term of office, she continued to play a major role in the Society as part of its Executive Board (in 2021) and as a member of the working groups on Juvenile Justice and Crime, Criminal Justice and the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Lesley is Co-Director (with Susan McVie) of the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, a prize-winning longitudinal programme of research on pathways into and out of offending for a cohort of around 4,300 young people. Funded by grants from the ESRC, the Nuffield Foundation and the Scottish Government, the study’s findings have been utilised in penal reform campaigns both nationally and internationally and have formed the principal evidence base for a range of youth justice policies in Scotland, including the ‘Whole System Approach’ and the decision to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility. In 2019, Lesley was the winner (with Susan McVie) of the ESRC prize for Outstanding Public Policy Impact.  She was awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List 2018 for services to Criminology, and elected as Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021.

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