Rate My Professor Fergus McNeill

Fergus McNeill is Professor of Criminology and Social Work in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow, serving as Associate Director of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research. Prior to entering academia in 1998, he worked for a decade in residential drug rehabilitation and as a criminal justice social worker. His research examines institutions, cultures, and practices of punishment, rehabilitation, and reintegration, with emphasis on desistance from crime, offender supervision, probation practice, and penal policy. He employs creative and ethnographic methods to understand experiences of those subject to criminal justice and practitioners alike.

McNeill has authored and edited numerous influential works, including Pervasive Punishment: Making Sense of Mass Supervision (2018), which won the European Society of Criminology’s Book Prize in 2021; Reimagining Rehabilitation: Beyond the Individual (co-edited with Burke and Collett, 2018); Probation: 12 Essential Questions (co-edited with Durnescu and Butter, 2016); and Offender Supervision: New Directions in Theory, Research and Practice (co-edited with Raynor and Trotter, 2010). Key recent publications include 'Probation and Parole in Europe' (co-authored with Boone and Carr, 2025, Crime and Justice), 'Tertiary or Relational Desistance: Contested Belonging' (2024, International Journal of Criminal Justice), and 'Progressive Penality as Performance' (co-authored with Buchan, 2023, Howard Journal of Crime and Justice). He leads the European Research Council Advanced Grant project Rehabilitation and Reintegration in Europe (RaRiE, 2026–2030) with partners at the Universities of Leiden and Oslo, following a British Academy/Leverhulme Mid-Career Fellowship for Pervasive Punishment (2017–2018). McNeill chaired the COST Action IS1106 on Offender Supervision in Europe (2012–2016), has supervised over 20 PhD students to completion, examined more than 50 theses worldwide, and delivered lectures such as the 2017 ICPA Distinguished Scholar Lecture on 'Rehabilitation, Corrections and Society'.