John Child

Professor John Child specialises in criminal law, doctrine and theory, and the relationship between criminal law and neuroscience.

John co-authors two leading criminal law textbooks: Simester and Sullivan’s Criminal Law and Smith, Hogan and Ormerod’s Essentials of Criminal Law.

John is also the founder and co-Director of the Criminal Law Reform Now Network. Launched in 2017, its mission is to facilitate collaboration between academics and other legal experts to gather and disseminate comprehensible proposals for criminal law reform to the wider community. We include members of the public and mainstream media as well as legal professionals, police, policymakers and politicians. Our proposals might require legislation but we do not restrict ourselves to such projects. Reforms which public bodies such as the Home Office, Police or CPS can bring about by internal policies interest us, as do reforms which require the support of some of the judiciary, bearing in mind the proper judicial constraints on law making. We are ready to consult with and make suggestions to anyone who has the power to bring about reform.