Personal / Bio

Peter Squires began working at the University of Brighton in 1986, and promoted to Professor of Criminology & Public Policy in 2005.  He graduated in Sociology & Social Policy from the University of Bristol and his PhD. titled, Studies in the Criminalisation of Poverty, was completed there in 1985.

After experience as a management Committee member of the Brighton Community Law Centre and the Community Health Council he was elected as a Brighton Borough councillor for Regency Ward (1990-1994).

Since the early 1990s he has helped develop the new teaching and research specialism in criminology and criminal justice at SASS (Brighton) at undergraduate and postgraduate (teaching and research) levels. This has attracted many new students and contributed to the significant growth of the school.

He has undertaken a great deal of research and consultancy with, among others, Sussex & Metropolitan Police, London Boroughs, the East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service and the Youth Justice Board; he has undertaken collaborative research with collegues in a number of other universities, including a series of research awards in 2004-5 to explore aspects of firearms-related offending.

In 2003 he was briefly co-opted onto the Home Office Firearms Consultative Committee as a result of his work in the field of firearms and crime.  He has successfully won research awards to investigate gangs, gun crime and youth offending.  His work on gun crime and gun control has had national and international impacts.  He was recently appointed as an advisor to the Association of Chief Police Officers independent advisory group on the criminal use of firearms.

View profile on The Guardian’s ‘Academic Experts’ directory, October 2007>