Dr Mark Brown

School of Law

Senior Lecturer

Mark.Brown@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 6716

EF11, Bartolomé House

Full contact details

Dr Mark Brown
School of Law
EF11
Bartolomé House
Winter Street
Sheffield
S3 7ND

Profile

I joined the School of Law in September 2014. Prior to that I spent four years developing a small law and justice consultancy focused on actors in the international sphere, based in Geneva, while also working as a Chamonix-based professional mountain guide.

My early career was spent in Australia where I was in the criminology program at the University of Melbourne until 2010. In 2011 I was a visiting professor at the Institute for Criminology and Criminal Law at the University of Lausanne. I retain a Senior Honorary Fellow position at Melbourne and have taught intensive masters modules on punishment and detention there and at the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney.

I have published extensively in the area of prisons and penal policy with a focus upon both contemporary and historical penality. In 2013 Ashgate published Penal Culture and Hyperincarceration: The Revival of the Prison (co-authored with colleagues from the University of New South Wales), a modern history of the prison in Australia since about 1970. In 2014 my book Penal Power and Colonial Rule, a study of colonial uses of law as a strategy of governance in British India, was published by Routledge. More recently I have published on postcolonial penalities, southern criminology and decolonising approaches in criminology.

I have worked on the Indian subcontinent in several capacities since 1999 when I held a visiting appointment at University of Delhi Law School. My research has taken me to Bhutan, India and Pakistan and I have spent a number of winter seasons in Kashmir and Nepal. In recent years I have been visiting and working with colleagues at Jigme Singye Wangchuck (JSW) School of Law in Thimphu, Bhutan, some of which has been funded by the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund and the Leverhulme Foundation.

In my Geneva-based consultancy I was a senior advisor at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime and advised on criminal justice reform at DCAF. Currently, I advise the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on matters surrounding imprisonment and recidivism globally, as well as undertaking strategic evaluations of UNODC work both in Vienna and in the field, including in Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iran, Kenya, and Pakistan.

I am currently working on a new book, tentatively titled Remaking Criminology. It develops my work on criminology and globalisation, postcolonialism and the southern criminological turn. My article on ‘Postcolonial Penalities’ in India won the best article of 2017 prize in the journal Theoretical Criminology. I welcome applications from potential PhD scholars in these areas of work.

Qualifications

PhD, Victoria University of Wellington

Research interests

Prisons and Penal Policy
Penal History and Theory
Colonial and Post-colonial Law and Justice
Global Criminology
Transnational Organised Crime
Fragile and Post-conflict States
Sustainable Development Goal 16 - Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies
Programme Evaluation in International Development

I invite expressions of interest from students interested in working within any of the areas of my research interest noted above.

Publications

Books

Brown M (2014) Penal Power and Colonial Rule. Abingdon: Routledge.
Cunneen C, Baldry E, Brown D, Schwartz M, Steel A & Brown M (2013) Penal culture and hyperincarceration: The revival of the prison. Routledge.
Brown M (2005) The New Punitiveness: Trends, Theories, Perspectives. Willan Pub.
Brown M & Pratt J (2000) Dangerous Offenders: Punishment and Social Order. London: Routledge.
Brown MM (1992) Decision Making in District Prisons Boards. Wellington: New Zealand Department of Justice.
Brown MM, Sanisoto B & Lungu O (1992) Cognitie Sociala (Social Cognition). Iasi, RO: Eurocart.

Edited books

(Ed.) (2008) Desirable Literacies: Approaches to Language and Literacy in the Early Years. SAGE Publications Ltd.

Journal articles

Brown M, Jadhav VK, Raghavan V & Sinha M (2021) Imperial legacies and southern penal spaces: a study of hunting nomads in postcolonial India. Punishment and Society, 23(5), 675-696. View this article in WRRO
Brown M (2021) Truth and method in southern criminology. Critical Criminology, 29(3). View this article in WRRO
Brown MM (2018) “An Unqualified Human Good”? On Rule of Law, Globalization, and Imperialism. Law and Social Inquiry, 43(4), 1391-1426. View this article in WRRO
Brown MM (2018) Colonial states, colonial rule, colonial governmentalities: Implications for the study of historical state crime. State Crime Journal, 7(2), 173-198. View this article in WRRO
Brown M (2017) Postcolonial penality: Liberty and repression in the shadow of independence, India c. 1947. Theoretical Criminology, 21(2), 186-208. View this article in WRRO
Carlen P (2014) Penal Culture and Hyperincarceration: The Revival of the Prison. By Chris Cunneen, Eileen Baldry, David Brown, Mark Brown, Melanie Schwartz and Alex Steel (Ashgate, 2013, 238pp. £70 ). British Journal of Criminology, 54(4), 689-691.
Baldry E, Brown D, Brown M, Cunneen C, Schwartz M & Steel A (2011) Imprisoning rationalities. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 44(1), 24-40.
Brown M (2011) Preventive Detention and the Control of Sex Crime. Alternative Law Journal, 36(1), 10-15.
Baldry E, Brown M & Cunneen C (2011) Introduction to the Special Issue of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 44(1).
Baldry E, Brown M & Cunneen C (2011) Introduction. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 44(1), 4-6.
Chambers JC, Ward T, Eccleston L & Brown M (2011) Representation of Female Offender Types Within the Pathways Model of Assault. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 55(6), 925-948.
Brown M & Ross S (2010) Assisting and Supporting Women Released from Prison: Is Mentoring the Answer?. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 22(2), 217-232.
Brown M (2010) Prevention and the security state: Observations on an emerging jurisprudence of risk. Champ pénal(Vol. VIII).
Brown M & Ross S (2010) Mentoring, Social Capital and Desistance: A Study of Women Released from Prison. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 43(1), 31-50.
Brown M & Ross S (2010) Assisting and supporting women released from prison: Is mentoring the answer?. Current Issues in Criminal Justice: Special Issue – Women and Imprisonment, 22(2), 1-16.
Chambers JC, Ward T, Eccleston L & Brown M (2009) The Pathways Model of Assault. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 24(9), 1423-1449.
Brown MM (2005) 'That heavy machine': Reprising the colonial apparatus in 21st century social control. Social Justice, 32, 41-52.
Brown M (2004) Crime, Liberalism and Empire: Governing the Mina Tribe of Northern India. Social & Legal Studies, 13(2), 191-218.
Ward T & Brown M (2004) The good lives model and conceptual issues in offender rehabilitation. Psychology, Crime & Law, 10(3), 243-257.
BROWN M (2003) Ethnology and colonial administration in nineteenth-century British India: the question of native crime and criminality. The British Journal for the History of Science, 36(2), 201-219.
Brown M & Chan KY (2003) 'We are neutral therapists': Psychology, the state and social control (vol 37, pg 165, 2002). AUSTRALIAN PSYCHOLOGIST, 38(2), 80-80.
Brown M (2002) “We are neutral therapists”: Psychology, the state and social control. Australian Psychologist, 37(3), 165-171.
Brown M (2002) The politics of penal excess and the echo of colonial penality. Punishment & Society, 4(4), 403-423.
Brown M (2002) Crime, Governance and the Company Raj. The Discovery of Thuggee. British Journal of Criminology, 42(1), 77-95.
BROWN M (2001) Race, Science and the Construction of Native Criminality in Colonial India. Theoretical Criminology, 5(3), 345-368.
BROWN M (2001) The Most Desperate Characters in All India. Punishment & Society, 3(3), 433-440.
Brown M & Young W (2000) Recent Trends in Sentencing and Penal Policy in New Zealand. International Criminal Justice Review, 10(1), 1-31.
Brown M (1998) Serious violence and dilemmas of sentencing: A comparison of three incapacitation policies. Criminal Law Review, 1998(10), 710-722.
Brown M (1998) Victoria's Project Pathfinder: In the Kingdom of the Blind…. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 10(2), 202-206.
Brown M (1997) Varieties of truth: Psychology-law discourse as a dispute over the forms and content of knowledge. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 2(2), 219-245.
Brown M & Sutton A (1997) Problem Oriented Policing and Organisational Form: Lessons From a Victorian Experiment. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 9(1), 21-33.
Brown M & Polk K (1996) Taking Fear of Crime Seriously: The Tasmanian Approach to Community Crime Prevention. Crime & Delinquency, 42(3), 398-420.
Brown MM (1996) Refining the risk concept: decision context as a factor mediating the relation between risk and program effectiveness. Crime and Delinquency, 42(3).
BROWN M (1996) SERIOUS OFFENDING AND THE MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC RISK IN NEW ZEALAND. British Journal of Criminology, 36(1), 18-36.

Chapters

Brown M (2023) Colonialism and penality, The Routledge International Handbook on Decolonizing Justice (pp. 380-390). Routledge
Brown MM (2018) Southern Criminology in the Post-colony: More Than a ‘Derivative Discourse’? In Carrington K, Hogg R, Scott J & Sozzo M (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South (pp. 83-104). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. View this article in WRRO
Brown M (2013) Colonial history and theories of the present: Some reflections upon penal history and theory, Crime and Empire 1840-1940: Criminal Justice in Local and Global Context (pp. 76-91).
Brown M (2013) The iron cage of prison studies In Scott D (Ed.), Why Prison? (pp. 149-169). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown M (2013) Liberal exclusions and the new punitiveness In Pratt J, Morrison W, Hallsworth S, Brown M & Brown D (Ed.), The New Punitiveness: Trends, Theories, Perspectives (pp. 272-289).
Brown M (2012) When Prison is not Prison: Australian Courts’ Rejection of Material Experience and Effects as Elements of Punishment In Masson I (Ed.), Experiencing Prison. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press.
Brown M (2011) Imprisonment and Detention In de Lint W & Marmo M (Ed.), Crime and Justice. Sydney: Thomson/Reuters.
White J (2011) Introduction, Outdoor Provision in the Early Years (pp. 1-11). SAGE Publications Ltd
Brown M (2010) Theorising dangerousness, Handbook of Public Protection (pp. 40-59).
(2010) Corrections (pp. 454.1-454). Royal College of General Practitioners
Brown MM (2009) Crime, Governance and the Company Raj In Wagner K (Ed.), Stranglers and Bandits: A Historical Anthology of Thuggee Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brown MM (2008) The Road Less Travelled: Arts-based Programs in Youth Correction In O'Brien A & Donelan K (Ed.), The Arts and Youth at Risk: Global and Local Challenges Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Brown MM (2008) Risk, Punishment and Liberty In Cunneen C & Anthony T (Ed.), The Australasian Critical Criminology Reader Sydney: Federation Press.
Brown MM (2008) True crime: W.H. Sleeman and the Thugs In Brittlebank K (Ed.), Significant Events and People of British India Melbourne: Monash University Press.
Marsh J & Hallet E (2008) Desirable Literacies: Approaches to Language and Literacy in the Early Years SAGE Publications Ltd
Brown MM (2007) Prisons In Galligan B & Roberts W (Ed.), The Oxford Companion to Australian Politics Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Brown MM (2005) Liberal Exclusions and the New Punitiveness In Pratt J, Brown D, Brown M, Hallsworth S & Morrison W (Ed.), The New Punitiveness: Current Trends, Theories, Perspectives Collompton Devon: Willan Publishing.
Brown MM, Eccelston L & Ward T (2003) The Assessment of Dangerous Behaviour In Fittskirk P & Shohov SP (Ed.), Focus on Behavioural Pychology Huntington, NY: Nova Science.
Ward T & Brown M (2003) The Risk-Need Model of Offender Rehabilitation: A Critical Analysis, Sexual Deviance: Issues and Controversies (pp. 338-353). SAGE Publications, Inc.
Brown MM, Eccelston L & Ward T (2002) The Assessment of Dangerous Behaviour In Shohoy P (Ed.), Advances in Psychology Research Huntington, NY: Nova Science.
Brown MM (2000) Calculations of Risk in Contemporary Penal Practice In Brown M & Pratt J (Ed.), Dangerous Offenders: Punishment and Social Order London: Routledge.
Brown MM & Pratt J (2000) Introduction In Brown M & Pratt J (Ed.), Dangerous Offenders: Punishment and Social Order London: Routledge.
Brown MM & Young W (1999) On Punitiveness and Inclusiveness: Offenders and Victims in New Zealand Criminal Justice In Rounds D & Delbert L (Ed.), International Criminal Justice: Issues in Global Perspective USA: Allyn and Bacon.
Brown MM & Young W (1998) The Use of Imprisonment: Trends and Cross-national Comparisons In Melossi D (Ed.), The Sociology of Punishment: Socio-Structural Perspectives Brookfield, USA: Dartmouth.
Brown MM, James S & Sutton A (1997) Law Enforcement and the Prevention of Drug Related Harm, Crime Prevention in Australia: Issues in Policy and Research Sydney: The Federation Press.
Brown MM & Young W (1993) The Use of Imprisonment: Trends and Cross-national Comparisons In Tonry M (Ed.), Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Brown M () Environmental crimes, illicit economies and the emergence of a Mekong Crime Complex In van Uhm DP & Siegel D (Ed.), Global Green Crime
Brown MM () ‘The birth of criminology in South Asia: c1765—1947’ In Shahidullah SM (Ed.), Crime, Criminal Justice, and the Evolving Science of Criminology in South Asia: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh View this article in WRRO

Book reviews

Brown M (2017) Provisional Authority. Police, Order, and Security in India. By BeatriceJauregui. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2016.. Law & Society Review, 51(3), 735-738.

Conference proceedings papers

Brown MM (2009) Toward a new economy of suspended rights: sex offenders and post-sentence confinement and control. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/4007. University of Sydney
Brown MM (2006) Before citizenship: liberalism's colonial subjects. http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProi/ASAA/biennial-conference/2006/proceedings.html. University of Wollongong
Brown M (1996) Refining the Risk Concept: Decision Context as a Factor Mediating the Relation Between Risk and Program Effectiveness. Crime & Delinquency, Vol. 42(3) (pp 435-455)

Other

Brown MM (2011) Building a force for good: the mission to create a viable Afghan National Police 2011-118.1..

Teaching interests

My teaching is underpinned by three key supports – a philosophy, a strategy and a style.

Philosophically, I believe that students learn best through engagement with their topic and the teaching materials that support it. Learning is enhanced if students can easily ‘find a way in’ to topics.

I believe that in criminology and law this is most effectively achieved by organising teaching around a series of narratives, or stories, that draw the student into a topic and help them to see the problem both in its wider context and its important detail.

Strategically, I think that teaching needs to balance foundational information about how legal and criminal justice processes operate with development of the conceptual tools for critique of those processes.

The modules I coordinate are thus structured around provision of both the ‘nuts and bolts’ knowledge that students need to take away as well as opportunities to learn and practice the techniques of analysis and critique. Assessment is designed so that students can demonstrate their grasp of both elements.

Finally, I aim for a teaching style that is open and, as far as possible within the large group lecture format, interactive.

My module websites provide students with the important points for each lecture – not lecture notes – and I speak to these in the lecture.

Students shouldn’t have their heads down taking notes in a lecture: you can’t listen properly when you’re doing that. And you certainly can’t engage in a dialogue.

I think effective teaching involves shifting lectures from being a content transfer exercise (from my lecture notes to the student’s lecture notes) to being an opportunity to listen and think and discuss.

Teaching activities

The modules I teach are:

Undergraduate

I contribute across a number of undergraduate modules

Postgraduate

Global Perspectives on Terrorism and Counterterrorism (convenor)
Crime and Globalisation (convenor)
Issues in Comparative Penology (convenor)

Professional activities and memberships: Member of the Centre for Criminological Research