Dr Rachel Condry

Department: Law Department; Mannheim Centre for Criminology
Contact Details: +44 (0)20 7955 6595; r.condry@lse.ac.uk

Rachel Condry joined the Law Department at LSE in 2005. She holds a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship Award in which she is researching parenting and youth justice. Dr Condry was previously a Lecturer in Criminology in the Department of Sociology at LSE (2002-2004) and a Visiting Fellow at the Mannheim Centre (2004-5). She has a Ph.D. from LSE (which was funded by an ESRC Research Studentship Award) and a BSc in Sociology (First Class Honours).

Recent Publications

Condry, R. (2006) ‘Stigmatised Women: Relatives of Serious Offenders and the Broader Impact of Crime’ in Heidensohn, F. (ed.) Gender and Justice: New Concepts and Approaches (Cullompton: Willan)

Condry, R. (2007) Families Shamed: The Consequences of Crime for Relatives of Serious Offenders (Cullompton: Willan)

Families Shamed is a book examining the experiences of relatives of those accused or convicted of serious crimes such as murder, manslaughter, rape and sex offences. A broader literature exists on prisoners’ families, but few studies have looked specifically at those related to serious offenders, or considered their experience other than as prison visitors. Many of the difficulties faced by ‘mundane’ prisoners’ families are magnified for the relatives of serious offenders, first by the length of sentence, and secondly by the seriousness and stigmatizing impact of the offence itself. Families Shamed draws upon intense qualitative research which combines long, searching interviews with the relatives of serious offenders with ethnographic fieldwork over a period of several years. The book focuses on how relatives made sense of their experiences, individually and collectively: how they described the difficulties they faced; whether they were blamed and shamed and in what manner; how they ‘understood’ the offence and the circumstances which had brought it about; and how they dealt with the contradiction inherent in supporting someone and yet not condoning his or her actions. This is the first book to tell the story of serious offenders’ families, the difficulties they face, and their attempts to overcome them. At the same time a focus on offenders’ families also draws our attention to the ways in which women are affected by crime, illuminating the broader effects of crime and the criminal justice process on the proportionately greater number of women involved. It contributes also to wider debates about the social organization of the meanings of crime, and questions the tenability of some core policy assumptions about offenders and their families; the relationship between the state and the family, and its bearing especially on expectations about family responsibilities.
Research Interests:

• Relatives of Offenders
• Stigma and Shame
• Motivational Accounts and Narratives
• State Regulation of Family Life
• Restorative Justice
• Parenting and Youth Justice

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