Evgenios Trivizas

Eugene Trivizas (Greek: Eυγένιος Τριβιζάς, Evgenios Trivizas; born 1946) is a Greek criminologist and writer of children's books.

For his lasting contribution as a children's writer, Trivizas was a finalist for the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2006.

Background

Born in Athens, he received his LL.B. degree from the University of Athens in 1969. In 1972, he passed the Athens Bar examinations and in the same year he was called as a barrister to the Athens Bar. In 1973, he received a BSc degree in Politics and Economics from the University of Athens and the following year he received an LL.M. degree in Comparative Criminal Law and Procedure from the University of London (University College) and a diploma in Shipping Law from the City of London Polytechnic. In 1977, he was made a Fellow of the Salzburg seminar in American studies and in 1979, he was awarded his PhD degree in Criminology from the University of London (London School of Economics and Political Science, Law Department).

Teaching

Since 1978, Trivizas has been responsible for the teaching of criminology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Reading. He is currently teaching a course on crime and society and he has been awarded the titles of director of criminal justice studies and senior research fellow.

During the past years, Trivizas taught part of the course, 'History of Sociological Theory', at the same university. He also taught criminology on a part-time basis at the Polytechnic of Central London and in the London School of Economics (Law Department 1983-4) Since 1992, he has been a visiting professor at the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens.

At the postgraduate level, he taught part of the M.A. course, 'Morals, Law and Elites in Contemporary Society', an option in the University of Reading MA course in Sociology, and the course 'Comparative Criminology' in the Graduate School of European and International Studies and in the MA degree in Criminal Justice. Since 1982, he has been supervising candidates for the degree of PhD and acting as one of the internal examiners for PhD students.

Research

Trivizas was one of the first academics to complete a systematic study of crowd disorders in England and their implications for the British system of criminal justice. He studied (a) the crowd participants and their interaction with the Police and (b) the attitude of the courts to them. This involved studying the problems deriving from football crowds, political demonstrations and pop festivals in the Metropolitan Police Area. In order to undertake the above research, he was attached to the Metropolitan Police Department (New Scotland Yard) for two years and spent a considerable amount of time in the Statistics Branch (Z10) and the Operations Branch (A8) at Scotland Yard in the Police Records Office at Peel House, and in eight London Police stations. In the course of his research, he was given complete access to the records of police and courts.

The Home Office and Scotland Yard gave him permission to participate in various types of police activities. He was able to accompany police officers in their crowd control and observation duties and to attend the briefing of police officers and the interviewing of offenders in the police stations.

He used his findings to make a comparative analysis of political and football crowd disorders in London - the first comparative empirical study in this field. He followed up this study of police and crowd behaviour with a detailed investigation of the ways in which offenders arrested as a result of various forms of crowd disorder were prosecuted and sentenced by the courts. In particular, he was able to demonstrate the high degree of prosecutorial discretion available to the police as a result of the existence of the many overlapping statute and common law offences, and to show how this affects police policy with regard to prosecuting. He was further able to show that similar events occurring in a variety of different types of crowd disorder were regarded very differently by the courts and were the subject of major discrepancies in sentencing.

He has also published extensively on many aspects of criminology, the sociology of deviance, the human rights implications of the electronic monitoring of offenders, and has written about censorship on a comparative basis. His last study, published in the British Journal of Criminology, deals with one of the most controversial issues in modern criminal justice policy, that of general deterrence. The underlying assumption of general deterrence theory and associated policy, is that individuals calculate the risk involved and refrain from criminal activity because of the fear of punishment. Opponents of general deterrence, on the other hand, dispute the thesis that potential criminals calculate risks in a rational manner and that the perception of the danger that they will be apprehended and punished for their misbehaviour, has any significant deterrent effect.