Professor Ross Deuchar

Criminologist

Academic

Writer

Public Speaker

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

I am a Scottish criminologist, known primarily for my work on gangs, masculinity, street culture, violence and gang desistance and also on policing, procedural justice and focused deterrence strategies.

I constantly strive to include the excluded, and regularly produce research insights which prioritise the voices of the most disadvantaged and hard to reach in our society. My work has spanned across three Continents of the world, having worked with the most marginalised and hard to reach gang members on the streets and in youth clubs, secure accommodation and prisons and conducted ethnographic research on gang intervention programmes in Scotland, Denmark, the United States of America and Hong Kong. I have also engaged in participant observation of frontline police practice, street advocacy and youth work in both the United States of America and Scotland

In March 2010, I was runner-up for the Economic and Social Research Council’s prestigious Michael Young Prize in recognition of my research into gang culture in the West of Scotland. In 2016-17, I was the recipient of a prestigious Fulbright scholarship award and spent a semester as Fulbright scholar-in-residence within the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida Atlantic University, USA.

I am the author of the pioneering new book Gangs and Spirituality: Global Perspectives (2018, Palgrave MacMillan), which was featured on the BBC Radio 4 ‘Thinking Allowed’ programme in the summer of 2018. See the Podcast for the programme here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7hbc0

I am also the author of the highly acclaimed book, Gangs, Marginalised Youth and Social Capital (2009, Trentham) its sequel Policing Youth Violence: Transatlantic Connections (2013, Trentham, IOE Press), co-editor of Researching Marginalized Groups (2016, Routledge) and co-author of Young People and Social Control: Problems and Prospects from the Margins (2017, Palgrave MacMillan).

My forthcoming book, Policing Gangs in Times of Crisis: Law Enforcement and Youth Violence in the Post-Ferguson Era’ (co-authored with Vaughn Crichlow and Seth Fallik) is due to be published by Bristol University Press in 2020.

Key Academic Achievements:

  • Six books including Gangs, Marginalised Youth & Social Capital (Trentham, 2009), Policing Youth Violence (IOE Press, 2013) and Gangs & Spirituality (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018).
  • One edited volume, a special issue of the journal, Youth Justice.
  • 40+ peer-reviewed journal articles, in outlets such as British Journal of Criminology, Police Quarterly, Deviant Behavior, Youth Justice, Sociology, Drugs & Alcohol Today, The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, Policing and Society, Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, Crime and Delinquency, International Journal of Drug Policy, Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention, Trends in Organized Crime, Critical Criminology, Journal of Youth Studies, Criminology and Criminal Justice, British Educational Research Journal, Journal of Refugee Studies and Oxford review of Education.
  • 15 book chapters in edited volumes published by Springer, Routledge, Elsevier, Oxford Press, Blackwell, Continuum, Edinburgh University Press and other leading scholarly presses.
  • Over 150 conference presentations and invited talks, including Fulbright lectures at Florida Atlantic University and Fulbright outreach lectures at George Mason University, University of Cincinnati.
  • Numerous opinion pieces and op-eds in outlets such as The Herald, The Scotsman, Times Educational Supplement.
  • Several media appearances, including radio appearances on BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed and BBC Scotland's Good Morning Scotland; and
  • TV appearances on BBC's Scotland Today, Channel 5's Britain’s Crime Capitals and the WKRC Local 12 News in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
  • 1304 citations; 19 h-index; 32 i10-index (source: Google Scholar)