Anthony Bottoms


Sir Anthony Edward Bottoms FBA is a British criminologist. He is life fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, having previously been a Wolfson Professor of Criminology at Cambridge University from 1984 to 2006 and until December 2007 a professor of criminology jointly at the universities of Cambridge and Sheffield.

Biography

Bottoms was born 29 August 1939 and educated at Eltham College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, followed by a PhD at Sheffield University. He worked as a probation officer before entering academic life as a researcher at Cambridge. At Camrbridge, he worked at the new Institute of Criminology under the guidance of Leon Radzinowicz. Subsequently, he became a lecturer in Sheffield, becoming a professor there in 1976. He was made Knight Bachelor in 2001 for services to the criminal justice system, an Honorary Doctor of Laws at the University of Edinburgh in 2015, and is a Fellow of the British Academy. He is life fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.
Bottoms' influence within British and global criminology and upon criminal justice practice has been considerable. He has published and contributed towards a large number of highly influential journal articles, official reports, book chapters, and books on topics including environmental criminology, probation, the sociology of punishment, community penalties, desistance research, policing, and prisons.
He has collaborated with, supervised, or taught, a number of other notable criminologists, including David Garland, Alison Liebling, Richard Sparks, John Pratt and Mike Nellis.

Selected publications