Critical criminologist Professor Phil Scraton, whose research exposed the institutional negligence that led to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, will speak about his work at a guest lecture to be hosted by Kent Law School on Tuesday 14 March.
The lecture, entitled ‘Hillsborough: Resisting Injustice, Recovering Truth’ will draw on his experiences of investigating the Hillsborough disaster and on research conducted over three decades.
Professor Scraton established the Liverpool City Council-funded Hillsborough Project in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster and published two in-depth critical research reports in 1990 and 1995.
Critical of the initial inquest findings of accidental death and the profoundly hostile media coverage that sought to blame the fans for the disaster in 1999 he published Hillsborough: The Truth revealing that the South Yorkshire Police, together with their solicitors, had reviewed and altered police statements.
A decade on, and following a committed campaign by bereaved families and survivors, the Labour government agreed for the Hillsborough Independent Panel to review all existing documents held by over 50 agencies. Professor Scraton headed the research team and was principal author of the Panel’s Report, Hillsborough published in September 2012. This led to new inquests with Professor Scraton acting as adviser to the families’ legal teams from 2013 through to their conclusion in April 2016. The jury subsequently found that all 96 victims had been unlawfully killed and ruled that fan behaviour did not cause or contribute to the tragedy. Findings from the criminal investigations that followed and from the investigations conducted by the Independent Police Complaints Commission are expected to be delivered in 2017.
Professor Scraton is Emeritus Professor in the School of Law at Queen’s University, Belfast. His recent books include: Power, Conflict and Criminalisation; The Violence of Incarceration; and The Incarceration of Women; Hillsborough: The Truth. He was awarded the Freedom of the City of Liverpool and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by the University of Liverpool in 2016.
The lecture on 14 March will be held at 6.15pm in Woolf Lecture Theatre on Kent’s Canterbury campus and forms part of Kent’s Distinguished Visitor Lecture series. Admissions is free and open to all.