The criminologist Nigel Walker, who has died aged 97, was a key figure in the development of the discipline in Britain. As reader at Oxford University (1961-73), he researched the treatment of mentally disordered offenders. As professor at Cambridge University (1973-84) and director of its Institute of Criminology for most of that time, he led the institute through a key transitional period, and turned his attention to the theory and practice of sentencing.
Walker came to criminology in his mid-40s, from a civil service background. His flair for clear exposition quickly established him as an effective teacher, and his early student textbook, Crime and Punishment in Britain (1965), became a standard work. Then in 1968 he published volume one of Crime and Insanity in England (1968), in which he examined how the law in England had dealt with offenders with mental disorders from Saxon times onwards. Still the definitive work in its field, this brought him a DLitt degree. It was written while he was awaiting the results of a follow-up study of 1,200 offenders committed to hospital by the courts under the Mental Health Act 1959; this was published as volume two of Crime and Insanity in England (1973), co-authored with Sarah McCabe.
In 1973, Sir Leon Radzinowicz of Cambridge retired from what was then still the only established chair of criminology in the UK. Walker was appointed to the post, and became also a fellow of King's College and director of the Institute of Criminology, founded in 1959 as the first interdisciplinary criminology department in a British university.
It was a complex time to assume the directorship. The initial funding model for the institute, which had involved guaranteed Home Office support for research projects, was no longer sustainable as more universities undertook criminological research. In addition, a growing number of radical criminologists were critical of what they regarded as Cambridge's "establishment-oriented" criminology. Walker successfully held the institute together in this transitional period, and laid solid foundations for its continued development. Its annual Nigel Walker lecture in criminology was first given in 1997.
At Cambridge, Walker's research work focused on sentencing. Within the philosophy of punishment, from the mid-1970s onwards there was a revival of various versions of retributive theory. Walker was sceptical about all forms of retributivism, and, in his several books on sentencing – notably Why Punish? (1991) – he became the leading British voice opposing these new developments. His utilitarian preferences also led him to espouse the possibility of longer-than-tariff sentences for violent offenders considered to present a future danger. Although not immediately taken up by policymakers, his analyses of this topic paved the way for greater acceptance of sentences of this kind.
Walker also maintained a strong interest in the actual practice of sentencing in the courts, and frequently introduced empirical data into his writings, as in his influential textbook Sentencing (1985; second edition, with Nicola Padfield, 1996) and in his lucid Aggravation, Mitigation and Mercy in English Criminal Justice (1999).
Throughout his criminological career, Walker contributed significantly to the work of government-appointed advisory committees. The role he found most interesting, and the one that had the greatest long-term impact on law and practice, was his membership of the interdepartmental committee on the treatment of offenders with mental disorders, chaired by the veteran Conservative politician Lord (Richard) Butler. Its two reports on the law and services relating to such offenders (1974-75) powerfully shaped the contemporary landscape of forensic psychiatry services.
Nigel was born in the northern Chinese seaport city of Tientsin (now known as Tianjin), the son of David, a British vice-consul, and Violet (nee Johnson). He was educated at Tientsin grammar school, then at Edinburgh Academy. At Christ Church, Oxford, he would have liked to read philosophy and psychology, but at that time psychology was available only at postgraduate level, so he graduated instead in philosophy and ancient history.
After second world war service in the Camerons and Lovat Scouts (1940-46), he became a civil servant in the Scottish Office (1946-61); for the latter part of his time there he was in the department responsible for criminal justice policy. Outside office hours, he pursued his longstanding interest in psychology, gaining a PhD (1954) with a thesis on the Freudian concept of the unconscious; three years later came A Short History of Psychotherapy, giving an insightful account of developments in the techniques of psychoanalysis.
In 1958, Walker won a one-year research fellowship for civil servants at Nuffield College, Oxford. During that year, he conducted a questionnaire-based study later published as Morale in the Civil Service (1961). Serendipitously, soon afterwards Max Grünhut, Oxford's first reader in criminology, retired. Despite the fact that, as he wrote in his autobiography, A Man Without Loyalties (2003), Walker then "knew no academic criminology", he was bold enough to apply – to the great future benefit of the discipline.In 1979 Walker was appointed CBE. His principal leisure interests were chess and hill walking.His happy marriage to Sheila (nee Johnston) lasted from 1939 until her death in 2007. Their daughter, Valerie, a clinical psychologist, survives them, as do two granddaughters and four great-grandchildren.
• Nigel David Walker, criminologist, born 6 August 1917; died 13 September 2014
The criminologist Nigel Walker, who has died aged 97, was a key figure in the development of the discipline in Britain. As reader at Oxford University (1961-73), he researched the treatment of mentally disordered offenders. As professor at Cambridge University (1973-84) and director of its Institute of Criminology for most of that time, he led the institute through a key transitional period, and turned his attention to the theory and practice of sentencing.
Walker came to criminology in his mid-40s, from a civil service background. His flair for clear exposition quickly established him as an effective teacher, and his early student textbook, Crime and Punishment in Britain (1965), became a standard work. Then in 1968 he published volume one of Crime and Insanity in England (1968), in which he examined how the law in England had dealt with offenders with mental disorders from Saxon times onwards. Still the definitive work in its field, this brought him a DLitt degree. It was written while he was awaiting the results of a follow-up study of 1,200 offenders committed to hospital by the courts under the Mental Health Act 1959; this was published as volume two of Crime and Insanity in England (1973), co-authored with Sarah McCabe.
In 1973, Sir Leon Radzinowicz of Cambridge retired from what was then still the only established chair of criminology in the UK. Walker was appointed to the post, and became also a fellow of King's College and director of the Institute of Criminology, founded in 1959 as the first interdisciplinary criminology department in a British university.
It was a complex time to assume the directorship. The initial funding model for the institute, which had involved guaranteed Home Office support for research projects, was no longer sustainable as more universities undertook criminological research. In addition, a growing number of radical criminologists were critical of what they regarded as Cambridge's "establishment-oriented" criminology. Walker successfully held the institute together in this transitional period, and laid solid foundations for its continued development. Its annual Nigel Walker lecture in criminology was first given in 1997.
At Cambridge, Walker's research work focused on sentencing. Within the philosophy of punishment, from the mid-1970s onwards there was a revival of various versions of retributive theory. Walker was sceptical about all forms of retributivism, and, in his several books on sentencing – notably Why Punish? (1991) – he became the leading British voice opposing these new developments. His utilitarian preferences also led him to espouse the possibility of longer-than-tariff sentences for violent offenders considered to present a future danger. Although not immediately taken up by policymakers, his analyses of this topic paved the way for greater acceptance of sentences of this kind.
Walker also maintained a strong interest in the actual practice of sentencing in the courts, and frequently introduced empirical data into his writings, as in his influential textbook Sentencing (1985; second edition, with Nicola Padfield, 1996) and in his lucid Aggravation, Mitigation and Mercy in English Criminal Justice (1999).
Throughout his criminological career, Walker contributed significantly to the work of government-appointed advisory committees. The role he found most interesting, and the one that had the greatest long-term impact on law and practice, was his membership of the interdepartmental committee on the treatment of offenders with mental disorders, chaired by the veteran Conservative politician Lord (Richard) Butler. Its two reports on the law and services relating to such offenders (1974-75) powerfully shaped the contemporary landscape of forensic psychiatry services.
Nigel was born in the northern Chinese seaport city of Tientsin (now known as Tianjin), the son of David, a British vice-consul, and Violet (nee Johnson). He was educated at Tientsin grammar school, then at Edinburgh Academy. At Christ Church, Oxford, he would have liked to read philosophy and psychology, but at that time psychology was available only at postgraduate level, so he graduated instead in philosophy and ancient history.
After second world war service in the Camerons and Lovat Scouts (1940-46), he became a civil servant in the Scottish Office (1946-61); for the latter part of his time there he was in the department responsible for criminal justice policy. Outside office hours, he pursued his longstanding interest in psychology, gaining a PhD (1954) with a thesis on the Freudian concept of the unconscious; three years later came A Short History of Psychotherapy, giving an insightful account of developments in the techniques of psychoanalysis.
In 1958, Walker won a one-year research fellowship for civil servants at Nuffield College, Oxford. During that year, he conducted a questionnaire-based study later published as Morale in the Civil Service (1961). Serendipitously, soon afterwards Max Grünhut, Oxford's first reader in criminology, retired. Despite the fact that, as he wrote in his autobiography, A Man Without Loyalties (2003), Walker then "knew no academic criminology", he was bold enough to apply – to the great future benefit of the discipline.In 1979 Walker was appointed CBE. His principal leisure interests were chess and hill walking.His happy marriage to Sheila (nee Johnston) lasted from 1939 until her death in 2007. Their daughter, Valerie, a clinical psychologist, survives them, as do two granddaughters and four great-grandchildren.
• Nigel David Walker, criminologist, born 6 August 1917; died 13 September 2014
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