Fergus McNeill is Professor of Criminology and Social Work at the University of Glasgow where he works in the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research and in Sociology. Prior to becoming an academic in 1998, Fergus worked for a decade in residential drug rehabilitation and as a criminal justice social worker. His many research projects and publications have examined institutions, cultures and practices of punishment and rehabilitation and their alternatives. Most recently, between 2017-21, Fergus led ‘Distant Voices: Coming Home’, a major, multi-partner Economic and Social Research Council/Arts and Humanities Research Council project which explored re-integration after punishment through creative practices and research methods. His recent books include ‘Reimagining Rehabilitation: Beyond the Individual’ (with Lol Burke and Steve Collett) and ‘Pervasive Punishment: Making sense of mass supervision’ (the winner of the European Society of Criminology's 2021 Book Prize).

Abi Dymond is an Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Exeter, UK, where her research focuses on the use of force by the police and in places of detention. She is the author of Electric-shock weapons, Tasers and Policing: Myths and Realities (Routledge, 2022) which won the Policing Book Prize from the European Society of Criminology’s Policing Working Group. She also engages impact activities both in the UK (advising the National Police Chief’s Council, College of Policing, the Independent Office of Police Conduct and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of the Constabulary) and internationally (working with UN Special Rapporteurs, the UN Prevention of Torture Subcommittee, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and the OSCE, amongst others) for which she was awarded the ESRC Celebrating Impact Award.

Emmy Rākete is a lecturer in Criminology at the University of Auckland. She is the press spokesperson for People Against Prisons Aotearoa, a prison abolitionist community organisation she helped to found in 2015. Her research uses Marxist critical political economy to describe the role of the criminal justice system in capitalist society. In 2018 she was heavily involved in organising and leading the victorious Arms Down campaign to oppose armed police patrols. She is currently organising a community campaign through People Against Prisons Aotearoa to oppose the construction of a megaprison at Waikeria.

Layla Skinns is a Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice and the Director of the Centre for Criminological Research, in the School of Law at the University of Sheffield, UK. A key focus of her research is the use and misuse of police powers, particularly in police detention, in England and Wales and other parts of the Anglophone world and how one researches the police institution. Over the last 15 years, she has led large police custody research projects, including the ESRC-funded 'good' police custody study. She has published widely in the field of policing and criminal justice, most recently including Police powers and Citizens' rights (Routledge, 2019) and Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press, 2021).