St Cross College, Oxford

BSc MSc UCL, MSc PhD LSE

Centre for Criminology

Email: ben.bradford

Department Website

Ben is Career Development Fellow at the Centre for Criminology. His research focuses primarily on issues of trust and legitimacy as these apply to the police and the wider criminal justice system. Key questions include: what do people want from policing; how can police behaviour actively encourage (or discourage) public cooperation; and what are the links between the legitimacy of legal authorities and compliance with the law?  His work has a particular emphasis on procedural justice theory and the intersection of social-psychological and sociological explanatory paradigms, and cross-national comparison of all these issues is a growing interest.

Ben has collaborated with the London Metropolitan Police and the National Policing Improvement Agency on several research projects concerned with improving police understanding of public opinions and priorities; he has also worked with the Open Society Foundation, looking at the effect unfair police practices can have on minority and excluded individuals and communities.