Rate My Professor Daniel McCarthy

Professor Daniel McCarthy is Professor in Criminology and Head of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey, within the School of Social Sciences in the Faculty of Arts, Business and Social Sciences. He holds a BSc, MSc, and PhD. His research specializations encompass policing, inter-agency working, prison and family effects, and incarceration. Key interests include cross-national research on public attitudes to policing and punishment, particularly the death penalty; the role of family contact in prisoner re-entry; the impact of prison conditions on prisoner behaviour during and post-sentence; and applications of criminological theory. He leads projects such as examining the impact of food on women's imprisonment journeys (ESRC-funded, Co-Investigator, £544,000) and delivering a parenting model intervention with two youth offending teams (Nuffield Foundation-funded, £75,000, with Maria Adams). Throughout his career at Surrey, McCarthy has undertaken leadership roles including Head of Sociology (current and 2015/16-2017/18), Director of BSc Criminology (2014-2015), Director of Postgraduate Studies (2011/12-2013/14), and Director of BSc Sociology.

McCarthy's contributions have earned him the 2014 British Society of Criminology Policing Network award, the 2014 Economic and Social Research Council Future Leaders Award, the 2015 Vice Chancellor's Researcher of the Year Award, and co-award of the 2019 Faculty Teacher of the Year Prize. His major publications include the books Soft Policing: The Collaborative Control of Anti-Social Behaviour (Palgrave, 2014), The Impact of Youth Imprisonment on the Lives of Parents (with Maria Adams, Routledge, 2023), and Beyond Porridge (with Maria Adams, Jon Garland, Vicki Harman, Erin Power, and Talitha Brown, Waterside Press, 2024). Selected journal articles feature 'Can family–prisoner relationships ever improve during incarceration? Examining the primary caregivers of incarcerated young men' (British Journal of Criminology, 2019), 'The effects of prisoner attachment to family on re-entry outcomes: A longitudinal assessment' (British Journal of Criminology, 2017), 'Attitudes towards the death penalty: An assessment of individual and country-level differences' (European Journal of Criminology, 2024), 'Food and penal legitimacy in women's prisons' (European Journal of Criminology, 2025), and 'You feel like you’re doing something: Foodcare as a family practice in the space of the prison visiting room' (Current Sociology, 2025).