[1] Between 1997 and 2005, Coyle was founding director of the International Centre for Prison Studies at the School of Law, King's College London.
[4] He has a PhD from the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh and was appointed a Fellow of King’s College London in 2004.
[8] From 2005 until 2010, he sat as a member of the inquiry into the murder of Billy Wright at Maze Prison, which was set up following the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement.
[9] From 2012 to 2013, at the request of the Scottish Government, Coyle carried out a review of proposed arrangements for the independent monitoring of prisons in Scotland.
[citation needed] Coyle has been an adviser on prison and criminal justice matters to the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the UN Latin American Institute for the Prevention of Crime, and the Council of Europe, including its Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT).