Robert Reiner

Robert Reiner is a British sociologist and criminologist, born in Hungary in 1946 to refugee parents who brought him to England at age two, who earned a degree in economics from Cambridge University in 1967 and a master's degree in sociology from the London School of Economics in 1969. He held posts as Reader in Criminology at Bristol University and Brunel University, served as President of the British Society of Criminology from 1993 to 1996, directed the LSE Mannheim Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice from 1995 to 1998, and later became Emeritus Professor of Criminology at the LSE Law School. Reiner is widely credited with helping establish police studies as a distinct field of criminology; his book The Politics of the Police has been described as the standard scholarly account of British policing in the post-war period. He also co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, a leading reference work in the discipline.