Simon Holdaway

Most of my research has been about aspects of policing, especially the police occupational culture and police race relations. I have written books about the police occupational culture, my 'Inside the British Police: A Force at Work' was based on covert research and has become a classic; the recruitment of ethnic minorities into the police; the resignation of ethnic minority officers; crime and deviance; Black Police Associations; and the racialisation of the British police.

Much of my research has had a relationship with policy change. I wrote the Commission for Racial Equality's evidence to the MacPherson Inquiry in the police investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. I was also a consultant on policing to the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain

In more general terms I am interested in the social construction of racialised relations, especially within work organisations, and the ways in which they are articulated. This theoretical perspective also secures his interests in police and policing, the sociology of crime and deviance, criminology, equal opportunities, race relations and ethnicity, youth offending, inter-agency work in criminal justice, including crime partnerships, social theory, policy making processes, occupational and organisational cultures and aspects of human identity, especially racialised identities.