Rachel Condry

Professor of Criminology

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Centre for Criminology

St Cross Building
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Oxford OX1 3UL

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Biography

Rachel Condry is Professor of Criminology and Fellow of St Hilda's College. She has previously been a lecturer in criminology at the University of Surrey, and a lecturer and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics. Her work focuses broadly on the intersections between crime and the family. She has carried out research projects on the families of serious offenders, prisoners’ families, parenting expertise in youth justice, and adolescent to parent violence. Rachel is the author of Families Shamed: The Consequences of Crime for Relatives of Serious Offenders (Willan, 2007).

Rachel conducted the first large-scale UK study of adolescent to parent violence, with Caroline Miles, funded by the ESRC. The findings are published in a number of journal articles and a forthcoming book (Palgrave, 2020). More information about the study can be found here. She has also worked with the UK government and a number of other experts to produce the first UK policy guidance on adolescent to parent violence.

Rachel is currently developing a new project on child to parent homicide in the UK. She is also working on the topic of prisoners’ families and recently published an edited book with Oxford University Press drawing together the work of international researchers working in this field. Rachel is co-editor of the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice. 

 

 

Publications

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  • R Condry and Caroline Miles, Uncovering Adolescent to Parent Violence (Palgrave 2021) (forthcoming)
  • R Condry and Caroline Miles, 'Adolescent to Parent Violence and the Challenge for Youth Justice ' in Mary Bosworth, Carolyn Hoyle, Lucia Zedner (ed), Changing Contours of Criminal Justice (OUP 2016)
    ISBN: 9780198783237
  • Caroline Miles and R Condry, 'Responding to adolescent to parent violence: challenges for policy and practice' (2015) 55 British Journal of Criminology 1076
    DOI: 10.1093/bjc/azv095
    Adolescent to parent violence has historically been a silent problem, absent from official discourse surrounding domestic violence, parenting or youth justice. In recent policy and legislation, adolescent to parent violence is increasingly being recognised as a form of domestic violence; however, this conceptualisation bears significant response implications. In this paper, the challenges of responding to adolescent to parent violence within a domestic violence framework are considered, including the characteristics of the parent-child relationship, parental responsibility in criminal justice, blurred victim/perpetrator boundaries, and the potential criminalisation of children. Whilst recognising the need for a criminal justice response, the paper argues for a more nuanced, holistic, and family-focused approach, which avoids the responsibilisation of parents or young people.
  • Shona Minson and R Condry, 'The visibility of children whose mothers are being sentenced for criminal offences in the courts of England and Wales' (2015) 32 Law in Context 28
    Set within a general understanding of the judicial interpretation of mitigation, and the development of sentencing guidelines, this article presents a study exploring the visibility of children within the sentencing process, and the way in which judges in the courts of England and Wales regard dependent children as a mitigating factor in sentencing. The findings, taken from the results of an analysis of sentencing transcripts from court cases in England and Wales, indicate that the visibility of children of defendants is increased at the initial sentencing hearing if the judge requests a pre-sentence report. In appellate decisions, the children have enhanced visibility as their limited impact on mitigation at first instance usually forms part of the grounds of appeal. There is, however, divergence on a case by case basis as to their impact on mitigation. In offences where a deterrent theory of punishment underpins the sentencing guidelines, the sentences have higher starting points and judges are less able to take the personal mitigation of the defendant’s dependent children into consideration. The discussion then considers the impact of these findings on the broader debates about the punitive impact of maternal imprisonment on children, issues of secondary victimisation, vulnerable populations and Human Rights.
  • R Condry and Caroline Miles, 'Adolescent to Parent Violence: Framing and Mapping a Hidden Problem' (2014) 14 Criminology and Criminal Justice
    DOI: 10.1177/1748895813500155
    Adolescent to parent violence is virtually absent from policing, youth justice and domestic violence policy, despite being widely recognized by practitioners in those fields. It is under-researched and rarely appears in criminological discussions of family or youth violence. This article presents the first UK analysis of cases of adolescent to parent violence reported to the police. We analyse victim, offender and incident characteristics from 1892 cases reported to the Metropolitan Police in 2009–2010, most of which involved violence against the person or criminal damage in the home. Our findings reveal that adolescent to parent violence is a gendered phenomenon: 87 per cent of suspects were male and 77 per cent of victims were female. We argue that the absence of adolescent to parent violence from criminological discourse must be addressed if criminology is to have a thorough understanding of family violence in all its forms.
  • Caroline Miles and R Condry, 'Adolescent to parent violence: the police response to parents reporting violence from their children' (2014) Policing and Society
    DOI: 10.1080/10439463.2014.989158
    Adolescent to parent violence is a form of family violence that is currently unrecognised in official discourse and statistics, despite increasing evidence that it is a significant problem. The data underpinning this article derive from the first large-scale study in the UK specifically exploring adolescent to parent violence, which examined the extent and nature of this problem; families’ experiences; and how reports of adolescent to parent violence are responded to within and outside of the criminal justice system. The article draws upon analysis of 100 police case files and interviews with 20 police officers to critically examine current police policy and practice in this emerging area of criminal justice. The findings highlight a high level of police discretion leading to inconsistency in how reported incidents are managed and the challenges encountered by police in responding to this complex form of family violence. The findings are considered within a broader domestic violence policy framework and we conclude by considering how police policy and practice might be developed in this area to meet the complex needs of families experiencing adolescent to parent violence.
  • K Bullock and R Condry, 'Responding to denial, minimization and blame in correctional settings: The ‘real world’ implications of offender neutralizations' (2013) 10 European Journal of Criminology 572
    DOI: 10.1177/1477370813475391
    This article examines ‘real-world’ implications of offender neutralizations. Drawing on empirical evidence derived from a study of the operation of community-based cognitive-behavioural programmes for perpetrators of domestic violence, it focuses on the implications, for offenders, of displaying neutralizations in correctional treatment settings. This article draws attention to the complex relationship between neutralization and correctional group work practice. First, it demonstrates that neutralization of offending does not always have the negative implications for offenders that have been assumed by some commentators. Neutralization may not preclude enrolment on to a correctional programme, is not always challenged in a confrontational way by practitioners and does not automatically result in suspension and the application of more punitive criminal sanctions. Second, the article demonstrates the difficulties that practitioners and participants face in tackling neutralizations in this context. Our findings suggest a need to rethink the central role that neutralizations play in aspects of contemporary criminal justice practice.
  • R Condry and C Miles, 'Adolescent to parent violence and youth justice in England and Wales' (2012) 11 Social Policy & Society 241
    DOI: 10.1017/S1474746411000601
    Adolescent to parent violence is a problem which remains largely unarticulated within youth justice policy literature and academic discourse in England and Wales. This article presents research evidence suggesting that adolescent to parent violence is a significant problem which needs to be clearly addressed in the youth justice policy agenda. Although it is widely recognised by practitioners and regularly encountered in their work, there is a ‘silence’ at the policy level and a lack of appropriate support services or responses. The article considers reasons for the absence of adolescent to parent violence in youth justice policy and argues for the importance of recognising and defining the problem and for the development of appropriate responses.
    ISBN: 1474-7464
  • R Condry, 'Families Outside: The Difficulties Faced by Relatives of Serious Offenders' (2007) Prison Service Journal
  • R Condry, 'My World as I Knew it - Gone: The Impact of Crime on Relatives of Serious Offenders' (2007) 33 Safer Society: The Journal of Crime Reduction and Community Safety
  • R Condry, 'Stigmatised Women: Relatives of Serious Offenders and the Broader Impact of Crime' in Frances Heidensohn (ed), Gender and Justice: New Concepts and Approaches (Willan Publishing 2006)

Research projects