Kent’s new Criminal Justice Group, launched at a guest lecture event on corruption by Baroness Vivien Stern CBE, seeks to ‘give a voice to those who would otherwise not be heard’.
Convenor of the new interdisciplinary research group, Professor Dermot Walsh, said: ‘Our research seeks to challenge the current orthodoxies and official policies in all areas of criminal justice; to expose the distorting influence of vested interests; to highlight abusive discrimination and corruption; and to identify and critique the ideologies that inform and drive current criminal justice policies and frameworks.
‘In short we aim to make a qualitative and very necessary contribution to an enlightened and fair criminal justice system and to the good of society as a whole – and most especially we aim to give a voice to those who would otherwise not be heard.’
To mark the launch of the group, Baroness Stern was invited to deliver a talk entitled ‘Grand Corruption and the Rule of Law: a Parliamentary Perspective’ to an audience of staff, students and visitors at Kent’s Canterbury campus on Thursday. Baroness Stern is pictured with Professor Walsh and Associate Lecturer Dr Lucy Welsh, a Kent Law Clinic Solicitor who specialises in all matters of criminal justice.
Professor Walsh said: ‘This event marks the emergence of a vibrant and productive research group at Kent Law School, composed of a large number of staff and PhD students working across an eclectic range of topics under the general rubric of criminal justice. What connects us all is a deep commitment to addressing fundamental issues of concern to the lives of individuals and communities in their local, national, EU and international environments.’
Current research projects within the group cover:
- Police governance and accountability
- Criminal procedure and historic child sexual abuse cases
- EU, transnational and international criminal law and procedure
- The interface between criminal justice and other areas such as: human rights, medical law (abortion), environmental law, EU law, international law (litigation on nuclear disarmament), commercial law, regulation, legal history and more.
A dynamic and expanding body of PhD students is working in areas as diverse as: State surveillance, pre-trial detention in Kuwait, human trafficking in South-east Asia and domestic violence. Recent PhD completions include theses on cross-border police cooperation and the effects of legal aid cutbacks and procedural reforms on defendants in criminal cases in Magistrates Courts in East Kent.
Professor Walsh said: ‘Our research in criminal justice also feeds into and is greatly benefited by the excellent work being done by Kent Law Clinic in the areas of: police complaints, criminal defendants who have been refused legal aid, prisoners and inquests.
‘And all of this is complemented by taught Master’s streams in Criminal Justice and in International Criminal Justice.’