David Scott

David was coordinator of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control from 2009-2012. He is a former editor of the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice and a co-founding editor of the journal Justice, Power and Resistance. He was the foundation chair of DD105 Introduction to Criminology from 2016-2021 and founded the ‘Weavers Uprising Bicentennial Committee’ charity in 2022.

David's main research interests include the ethico-political foundations of penal abolitionism; the historical relationship between penal abolitionism and socialism'; socialists ethics and responses to poverty, prisons and punishment, and state crime.

Book titles include
Controversial Issues in Prisons (Open University Press, 2010);
Why Prison? (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Against Imprisonment (Waterside Press, 2018), For Abolition (Waterside Press, 2020) and
The International Handbook of Penal Abolition (Routledge, 2021)

David is currently compiling two edited books on the historical roots of penal abolition for Bristol University Press and editing a book for Palgrave with Joe Sim entitled ‘Demystifying Power, Crime and Social Harm’ (Forthcoming, 2023).