Meeting Professor Nick Hardwick, Professor of Criminal Justice, Royal Holloway University of London

Over the past 20 years, there are few people who have played such a key role in policing and the criminal justice system in England and Wales as Nick Hardwick.

After leading the homeless charity Centrepoint and the Refugee Council, Hardwick became the first Chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which was formally set up in 2004. He oversaw investigations into the fatal police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Underground Station in London and the death of the newspaper seller, Ian Tomlinson, at the G20 protests in the City of London in 2009.

Hardwick was Chief Inspector of Prisons between 2010 and 2016 and went on to chair the Parole Board before resigning over the John Worboys affair in 2018. Since then, he has been lecturing at Royal Holloway, University of London, as Professor of Criminal Justice.

In a wide-ranging interview in the latest edition of ‘Talking Crime’, Policing TV’s Chief Presenter, Danny Shaw, spoke to Professor Hardwick about reforms to the parole system, building prisons, drugs policy, policing protests – and misconduct in the police service:

“If you look at some of the instances we’ve seen, the questions that should be asked would be of the supervisors of those units, saying: ‘Why, you know, if you knew about this, this culture, why didn’t you do something about it? And if you didn’t know about it, why not?’”.