After his first degree at the University of York, where he was one of the initial intake of 150 undergraduates, he did research at Peterhouse, Cambridge, into the maintenance of public order in England during the French Revolution.
At this point he had to make a career decision, having been a prominent member of the National Youth Theatre as an actor during his time at university.
[3] He was elected president of the International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice in 1995 and continued in the post.
[3] From October to November 2003 he was visiting professor at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and from September to December 2004, visiting research fellow at the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian University, Canberra.
[4] He maintained a research interest in the revolutionary and Napoleonic era, but from the early 1980s onwards, his work focused primarily on the history of crime and policing.