Professor of Criminology

Contact Details

• Tel: +44 (0)116 252 3948  
• Email: ch140@le.ac.uk
• Office: Room 2.05 2nd floor, 154 Upper New Walk
• Office Hours: By appointment only

Biography

Carol Hedderman, BA (Hons), M. Phil (Cantab), PhD (Cantab) was appointed Professor of Criminology at the University of Leicester in October 2004.

From 1986-1999 she worked in the Home Office Research and Statistics Directorate conducting and managing research which included projects on sentencers’ decision-making, the sentencing of women, and the enforcement of community sentences and the treatment of mentally disordered and sex offenders.  Between 1999 and 2002 she was Deputy Director of the Criminal Policy Research Unit at London Southbank University (now the Institute for Criminal Policy Research at Kings College London). During that time she managed projects on a range of topics including probation enforcement, dealing with domestic violence and evaluating projects to reduce burglary. She also served on the Parole Board during this period.  Carol returned to the Home Office as an Assistant Director of the Home Office Research and Statistics Directorate in October 2002 where she had lead responsibility for statistics and research into the management and impact of the prison and probation services. Carol is a member of the Independent Advisory Group on Women in the Criminal Justice System set up by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform in 2009.

Research Interests

The effectiveness of sentencing; 'rational' approaches to sentencing; the comparative effectiveness of different approaches to enforcing court penalties; 'what works' in prison and probation; desistance; reconviction studies and the development of alternative measures of effectiveness; treatment of female offenders at different stages of the criminal justice system.

PhD Supervision

Professor Hedderman would be interested in supervising PhD study in the following areas:

• The effectiveness of sentencing - what effectiveness means and how it is measured
• Securing compliance with supervision, the aims and value of enforcement
• 'What Works’ in prison and probation (including interventions to support offenders into employment)
• The desistance vs risk/needs debate
• Desistance and women offenders
• Community programmes for women offenders
• Reconviction studies and the development of alternative measures of effectiveness
• Performance management in the probation service
• Change and the probation service

Most Recent Publications

Hedderman, C. (2012) Empty Cells or Empty Words? Government policy on reducing the number of women going to prison. London: Criminal Justice Alliance. 

Hedderman, C., Gunby, C. and Shelton, N. (2011) 'What women want: the importance of qualitative approaches in evaluating work with women offenders', Criminology and Criminal Justice, 11 (1): 3-19. 

Full listing of publications