Academic Profile

I joined the School of Law in January 2008, after completing my doctorate on girls and youth justice at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge. Prior to my academic career I spent several years as a practitioner in social work and related fields: as a social worker in a Youth Offending Team and as branch manager for a voluntary organisation working with young people and adults with disabilities.

I am currently writing my first book, Offending Girls, to be published by Willan/Routledge in 2011.

Member of the Centre for Criminological Research Cluster.

Qualifications

• PhD, University of Cambridge
• MSc, Applied Social Studies and Diploma in Social Work (DipSW), University of Oxford
• MA Modern Languages, University of Cambridge

Research Interests

My research interests span the social and penal regulation of 'troublesome' children and young people, particularly girls, women who offend, and desistance from crime.

I am actively involved in research in the area of community provision for women who offend, and recently carried out a major review of such provision in Britain for the Fawcett Society, as well as an evaluation of the Re-Unite project (both with Loraine Gelsthorpe at the University of Cambridge). Re-Unite is an innovative London-based partnership providing stable, safe accommodation and intensive support to women leaving prison who have dependent children.
My current research focuses on examining long-term patterns of desistance from crime through longitudinal qualitative interviews. With colleagues at Sheffield (Stephen Farrall and Ben Hunter) and Hull (Adam Calverley), I am re-tracing a cohort of almost 200 individuals who were on probation in the late 1990s. In addition, I am retracing, after five years, 52 young women whom I interviewed for my doctoral research, when they were teenagers involved in the youth justice system. This study focuses on the girls’ transitions into adulthood and their patterns of desistance from, and persistence in, offending.

 Key Publications

Sharpe, G. (forthcoming) Offending Girls: Young Women and Youth Justice. Cullompton: Willan.

Sharpe, G. (2010) ‘ Beyond Youth Justice: Working with Girls and Young Women who Offend’, in R. Sheehan, G. McIvor and C. Trotter (eds.) Working with Women Offenders in the Community. Cullompton: Willan.

Sharpe, G. (2009) 'The Trouble with Girls Today: Professional Perspectives on Young Women´s Offending', Youth Justice, 9(3).

Sharpe, G. and Gelsthorpe, L. (2009) 'Gendering the Youth Justice Agenda: Introduction to a Special Issue on Girls and Young Women', Youth Justice, 9(3).

Gelsthorpe, L., Sharpe, G. and Roberts, J. (2007) Provision for Women Offenders in the Community. London: Fawcett Society.

Recent Invited Papers and Keynote Lectures

Sharpe, G. ‘Beyond youth justice: working with girls and young women who offend’, conference on Women, Punishment and Community Sanctions: Human Rights and Social Justice, Scottish Universities Insight Institute, June 2010.

Sharpe, G. ‘Women Offenders and Community Supervision: Promoting Desistance from Crime’, Alternatives to custody for women offenders: what difference have these initiatives made to women and to the criminal justice system? conference, Nottingham, UK, July 2010.

Key Projects/Grants

Awarding Body: Leverhulme Trust
People Involved: Professor Stephen Farrall, Dr Gilly Sharpe
Title of Research: Tracking progress on probation: long-term patterns of desistance and reform
Years funded for: 2
Amount: £191,346

Professional Activities and Recognition

Guest editor, Youth Justice, December 2009

Peer reviewer for the European Journal of Criminology, British Journal of Social Work, and International Review of Victimology.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Gender, Crime and Criminal Justice
• Victimisation, Policing and Crime Prevention
• Youth Crime and Justice

Postgraduate and MA

• Methods of Criminological Research

Areas of Research Supervision

• Youth crime/youth justice
• Young women and criminalisation
• Women offenders