1st Edition

Pracademics in Criminal Justice

Edited By Di Turgoose, Victoria Knight, Darren Woodward Copyright 2025
    232 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    232 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Providing an in-depth interrogation of the practitioner/academic role within the context of criminal justice, this book outlines the benefits and challenges of different roles through exploring the lived experience of the contributing authors.

    Arranged into three comprehensive sections, the book acknowledges the contribution pracademics make to criminal justice, conceptualises pracademia in the criminal justice context, and explores what it means to be a pracademic in a criminal justice setting. Exploring the theoretical, methodological, philosophical, practice and pedagogic value that practical application brings to teaching, learning and research, the book collectively develops a pracademic model framed within the context of criminal justice, which challenges the established ‘historical/traditional’ wisdom of academia with the aim of disrupting traditional knowledge production, contributing to new discussions and highlighting the value of scholarship grounded in practice in criminal justice.

    Written and edited by pracademics with extensive criminal justice experience, Pracademics in Criminal Justice will be of value to anyone with an interest in how practice and academia intertwine in a criminal justice setting, including pracademics, academics, practitioners, applied academics, those with lived experience of practice in academia, activists, practivists and students, particularly those undertaking professional programmes, in areas such as policing or probation, or seeking careers as practitioners in the criminal justice system.

    Foreword

    Hazel Kemshall

     

    1. Introduction: Locating pracademics in criminal Justice   

    Di Turgoose, Victoria Knight and Darren Woodward

     

    PART 1: An Anatomy of the Pracademic in Criminal Justice

     

    2. Applying Anthropology to Culturally-Conscious Criminal Legal Concerns  

    Caleb D. Sabatka

     

    3.  Intrapreneurship and criminal justice: Pracademia with purpose   

    Jason Morris

     

    4. The Never-ending barriers for the formerly incarcerated pracademic 

    David Honeywell

     

    PART 2: Pracademic Transitions

     

    5. Learning to Live with Liminality: Reflections of a probation pracademic  

    Sam Ainslie

     

    6. The role and experiences of Forensic Psychologist pracademics working within a Long Term and High Security prison setting         

    Alice Bennett and Jenny Tew

     

    7. Pracademia: Lessons to be Learned when Transiting from Practice to Academia 

    Steve Christopher

     

    PART 3: The Application of Pracademia

     

    8. ‘When you have walked the walk…’ Transitions from prison landings to Higher Education (HE) 

    Sarah Nixon

     

    9. Operationalising theory: The role of the pracademic in the pedagogy of student police officers 

    Anne Eason

     

    10. Filling in the gaps: Australian pracademics creating social justice impact in a criminal justice setting

    Sara Kowal, Sally Andersen, Jeff Giddings and Jennifer Paneth  

     

    11. The challenges of keeping it real: The role of storytelling and digital technology in probation training to explore risk and desistance   

    Sarah O’Neill

     

    12. Exploring the Potential of Virtual Environments in Addressing Domestic Violence and Abuse in the pracademic classroom 

    Di Turgoose

     

    13. A Foot in All of the Camps: A Personal Reflection of the Merging of Lived Experience, Practice and Academia

    Lucy Baldwin

    Biography

    Di Turgoose is an Associate Professor and Teacher Fellow located in the discipline of Criminology and Criminal Justice at De Montfort University.

    Victoria Knight is Associate Professor of Research at De Montfort University, UK.

    Darren Woodward is a Lecturer at the School of Criminal Justice, Arden University, UK.