Reflections on the life of a British criminologist: Tony Bottoms in conversation

This conversation is a composite of two interviews with Tony Bottoms, conducted by Caroline Lanskey and Richard Sparks, in March and October 2018. The first was a public event, as part of the Institute of Criminology’s ‘In conversation with …’ series. The second, intended to pick up issues that were missed or left inadequately discussed first time round, took place at Tony’s home. The conversation addresses a wide range of topics in roughly chronological order. These include key intellectual and personal influences, especially in Tony’s early life; his views on relations between practice and academic inquiry in light of his experiences as a probation officer; the changing contours and characteristics of criminology as a field; and Tony’s principal contributions to research. With regard to the latter, the discussion touches upon Tony’s work in environmental criminology, sentencing and parole, prisons, problems of procedural justice and legitimacy, desistance from crime, and theories of compliance. Among the distinctive features of Bottoms’s work throughout have been his concerns with the normative dimensions of criminological questions, and the relations between empirical inquiry and policy problems.