Liam Martin

Liam’s research focuses on issues of incarceration and alternatives to prison. His long-term ethnographic fieldwork at a halfway house in Greater Boston was published as the book Halfway House: Prisoner Reentry and the Shadow of Carceral Care (New York University Press). The work develops a ground-up portrait of life under American mass incarceration, and interrogates the tensions of justice reform strategies that rely on shifting criminal punishment from prison into community settings.

Since joining the Institute of Criminology, Liam has been a regular contributor to national debates over prison reform in Aotearoa New Zealand, through media interviews, talks and written public commentaries. He also teaches the course Prisons in Aotearoa New Zealand, and beginning in 2022, will coordinate the new course Colonisation and Criminal Justice in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Liam’s book can be accessed here: https://nyupress.org/author/liam-martin/.