Helen Kosc is a Doctoral Researcher in the University of Oxford’s Department of Sociology. This is Helen’s second year as a CCSF Scholar, and she hopes to make the CCSF community proud with her continuing research efforts.
Calling herself an ‘evidence-based activist’, she harnesses research to improve the knowledge and application of prison reintegration policies across the Western world.
Helen’s research journey began in Kingston, Ontario, where she completed a BA (Hons) at Queen’s University. It was during her time at Queen’s that she received her Correctional Service Canada Volunteer ID and began volunteering in Canadian correctional facilities and prisons.
The five years she spent volunteering across five Canadian Correctional Facilities left her with an important vocation: she knew she owed it to every individual she met to do more, and this meant inspiring structural and systemic changes in the criminal justice system.
This is precisely what led her to the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford, where, under the supervision of experts in the field of criminal justice, she would conduct MSc and Doctoral research to improve the knowledge and application of prison reintegration policies.
Her master’s dissertation, entitled ‘Freedom Amidst Crisis: Experiences of Inmate Re-entry during the Covid-19 Pandemic, and Implications for Support Networks and Services’,?investigated support networks and resources available to those released from prison during the pandemic in the United Kingdom.
For her doctoral research, Helen is working in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice and Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner, investigating the resettlement journeys of 200 prison-leavers released from His Majesty’s Prison Bullingdon in England. This involves ethnographic participant observation and unstructured interviews, pre- and post-prison release, over the course of 18 months. She expects to learn about the mechanisms that contribute to the desistence vs persistence of criminal activity by speaking to prison leavers and practitioners directly.
Beyond her doctoral research, Helen has extensive research experience in the field of criminal justice: she was a Research Assistant for the largest experimental audit study measuring discriminative hiring of ex-offenders in Europe. She has co-authored a chapter in the newest Oxford Handbook of Evidence-Based Crime and Justice Policy, with Professor David Kirk, and worked alongside Dr. Miri Zilka investigating how strategic decisions are made about where, when and how to employ data science in policing.
Looking forward, Helen has a forthcoming chapter in the newest edition of Criminal Justice in Canada and she has has joined the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge to conduct research on the use of artificial intelligence in the management of known offenders.
