Sir Anthony Edward Bottoms FBA (born 29 August 1939) is a British

criminologist Criminology (from Latin , "accusation", and Ancient Greek , ''-logia'', from λόγος ''logos'' meaning: "word, reason") is the study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in both the behavioural and so ...

. He is life fellow at

Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge Fitzwilliam College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , establish ...

, having previously been a

Wolfson Professor of Criminology The Wolfson Professor of Criminology is a senior professorship at the University of Cambridge. The position was established in 1960 by a benefaction by the Wolfson Foundation and is the first of its kind in Britain. The position's first holder ...

at the Institute of Criminology in the Faculty of Law at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

from 1984 to 2006University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology
Professor Anthony Bottoms - Biography and until December 2007 a professor of criminology jointly at the universities of

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

and

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire a ...

.University of Sheffield School of Law
Professor Sir Anthony Bottoms

Biography

Bottoms was educated at

Eltham College Eltham College is an independent day school situated in Mottingham, southeast London. Eltham and Mottingham once formed part of the same parish, hence its name. It is a member of The Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC). Early hi ...

and

Corpus Christi College, Oxford Corpus Christi College (formally, Corpus Christi College in the University of Oxford; informally abbreviated as Corpus or CCC) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1517, it is the 12t ...

Burke's Peerage Burke's Peerage Limited is a British genealogical publisher founded in 1826, when the Irish genealogist John Burke began releasing books devoted to the ancestry and heraldry of the peerage, baronetage, knightage and landed gentry of Great ...

. Accessed 3 February 2009. followed by a PhD at Sheffield University.Notices
admin.cam.ac.uk. 10 June 2005. He worked as a

probation officer A probation and parole officer is an official appointed or sworn to investigate, report on, and supervise the conduct of convicted offenders on probation or those released from incarceration to community supervision such as parole. Most probati ...

before entering academic life as a researcher at Cambridge. At Cambridge, he worked at the new Institute of Criminology under the guidance of

Leon Radzinowicz Sir Leon Radzinowicz, (15 August 1906 – 29 December 1999) was a criminologist and academic. He was the founding director of the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. Early life Radzinowicz was born on ...

. Subsequently, he became a lecturer in Sheffield (1968), becoming a professor there in 1976.Debretts
Prof Sir Anthony Bottoms He was knighted in 2001 for services to the criminal justice system,BBC News
15 June 2001. an Honorary Doctor of Laws at the University of Edinburgh in 2015, and is a Fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars spa ...

. He is life fellow at

. 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. Among his contributions, he coined the term 'populist punitiveness' in 1995, subsequently more widely referred to as

penal populism Penal populism is a media driven political process whereby politicians compete with each other to impose tougher prison sentences on offenders based on a perception that crime is out of control. It tends to manifest in the run up to elections when ...

, a hypothesis that became influential within the sociology of punishment.

Selected publications

*A.E. Bottoms (1977) 'Reflections on the renaissance of dangerousness', ''Howard Journal of Penology and Crime Prevention'', Vol. 16(2), pp. 70-96. *A.E. Bottoms (1995) 'The Philosophy and Politics of Punishment and Sentencing', in C. Clarkson and R. Morgan (eds) ''The Politics of Sentencing Reform'', Oxford: Clarendon. *R. Sparks, A.E. Bottoms and W. Hay (1996) ''Prisons and the Problem of Order'', Clarendon Press *A. von Hirsch, A.E. Bottoms, E. Burney and P-O. Wikström (1999) ''Criminal Deterrence and Sentence Severity'', Hart Publishing *A.E. Bottoms (2001) ‘Compliance and Community Penalties’ in A.E. Bottoms, L. Gelsthorpe and S. Rex (Eds) ''Community Penalties: Change and Challenges'', Willan Publishing *A.E. Bottoms (2002) ‘Morality, Crime, Compliance and Public Policy’ in A.E. Bottoms and M. Tonry (Eds) ''Ideology, Crime and Criminal Justice'', Willan Publishing *A.E. Bottoms (2003) ‘Theoretical Reflections on the Evaluation of a Penal Policy Initiative’ in L. Zedner and A. Ashworth (Eds) ''The Criminological Foundations of Penal Pol''icy, Oxford University Press * *A.E. Bottoms (2006) ‘Incivilities, Offence and Social Order in Residential Communities’, in A. von Hirsch and A. Simester (Eds) ''Incivilities: Regulating Offensive Behaviour'', Hart Publishing *C. Walston and A. Bottoms (eds) ''Challenging Crime: A Portrait of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology'', Third Millennium Publishing

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bottoms, Anthony Living people British criminologists Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Academics of the University of Sheffield Fellows of the British Academy Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford Fellows of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge Knights Bachelor People educated at Eltham College 1939 births Wolfson Professors of Criminology