Dr Gabrielle Watson wins European Book Prize

Dr Gabrielle Watson’s first book, Respect and Criminal Justice (OUP 2020), has been awarded the Policing Book Prize of the European Society of Criminology 2021. The prize recognises major contributions to the development of policing scholarship in Europe and is awarded to the author of the best such book published that academic year.

The book offers the first academic study of ‘respect’ in criminal justice in England and Wales, where the value is elusive but of central and enduring significance. Owing to some sustained—but ultimately unsuccessful—reform efforts in recent decades, criminal justice institutions regularly appeal to the word ‘respect’, proclaiming it as a core value in official discourse. Yet, on closer examination, their approach to the value is not clear-cut and, in policing and prisons alike, respect is reduced to a mere slogan. The book critiques this reality—and then envisages the advances that could be made—in inscribing genuinely respectful relations between state and subject.

It has received the following reviews:

‘An imaginative, sensitive, and finely-textured interpretation’ Nicola Lacey CBE FBA (LSE) for Oxford University Press

‘Refreshingly original and bold… work of outstanding quality’ Justice Tankebe (Cambridge) for Oxford University Press

‘A significant contribution to the field... an indispensable reference’ Loraine Gelsthorpe and Kyle Treiber (Cambridge) for Oxford University Press

‘Admirably far-reaching [and] rigorous… an impressive debut’ David Hayes (Sheffield) for Criminology and Criminal Justice