Academic profile

I completed my PhD in 2009. My thesis looked at the existential aspects of white-collar offenders’ desistance from crime and their efforts to construct narratives of their lives in the wake of conviction. I spent a year as a Teaching Fellow at Keele University School of Sociology and Criminology before coming to Sheffield University Law School as a Research Associate.

I am currently involved in the project Tracking Progress on Probation: Long Term Patterns of Desistance. The project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and run by Stephen Farrall and Gilly Sharpe at Sheffield University Law School. This project represents the fifth sweep of a sample first interviewed in 1998 about their experiences of probation and their own offending. It is scheduled to run until April 2012.

My main research interests are white-collar crime, desistance from crime and resettlement after conviction and punishment. I have recently completed an article on white-collar offenders’ anticipation of release from prison.

Member of the Centre for Criminological Research Cluster.

Qualifications

• PhD, University of Keele
• MA Criminology and Research Methods, University of Keele
• BSc, University of Keele

Research Interests

• Desistance from crime
• White-collar crime
• Qualitative research methods
• Existential sociology

Key Publications

With Farrall, S., Sharpe, G. & Calverley, A. ‘Theorising structural and individual-level processes in desistance and persistence: Outlining an integrated perspective. Submitted to the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology.

Hunter, B. (in press) '"I can't make my own future": White-collar offenders and the anticipation of release from prison' in Farrall, S., Hough, M., Sparks, R., & Maruna, S. (ed). Escape Routes. Taylor and Francis.

Shover, N. & Hunter, B. (2010) Blue collar, white-collar: Crimes and Mistakes. In Bernasco, W. (ed) Offenders on Offending: Learning About Crime from Criminals. Portland: Willan.

Hunter, B. (2009). White-collar offenders after the fall from grace: Stigma, blocked paths and resettlement. In Lippens, R. & Crewe, D. (eds) Existentialist Criminology. London: Routledge.