Currently he is Professor Emeritus, School of Law at Queen's University Belfast, and formerly Director of the Childhood, Transition and Social Justice Initiative.
[1] He has also researched deaths in custody, the marginalisation and criminalisation of children and young people, the politics of imprisonment, and the analysis of disasters and their impact on the bereaved and survivors.
In 1979, Phil Scraton joined the Open University's academic staff as a member of the 'Crime, Justice and Society' course team, contributing also to the Social Sciences' Foundation Course.
In 1984 at Edge Hill College, with Kathryn Chadwick, he established the Centre for Studies in Crime and Social Justice, developing the University's first Masters and Doctoral programmes.
More recently, alongside his work on Hillsborough, he published Power, Conflict and Criminalisation (Routledge, 2007) a book that covers the full range of his critical research.
With co-researchers Siobhan McAlister and Deena Haydon, he co-authored Childhood in Transition: Experiencing Marginalisation and Conflict in Northern Ireland (Save the Children/ The Prince's Trust, 2009).
In 2013, in partnership with Siobhán McAlister, he was awarded ESRC Knowledge Exchange funding for the project Identifying and Challenging the Negative Media Representation of Children and Young People in Northern Ireland.
The project, in collaboration with Include Youth and a range of other children's and young people's rights charitable organisations, appointed Faith Gordon as Research Fellow.
He is author/ editor of ′I Am Sir, You Are A Number': Report of the Independent Panel of Inquiry into the Circumstances of the H-Block and Armagh Prison Protests 1976-1981 (Coiste na nIarchimí, 2020) https://www.statewatch.org/media/1396/ni-report-inquiry-h-block-armagh-prison-protests-10-20.pdf and co-author, with Gillian McNaull, of Death Investigation, Coroners' Inquests and the Rights of the Bereaved (Irish Council for Civil Liberties, 2021) https://www.iccl.ie/report/iccl-report-on-the-coroners-system/ In 2021, with Dr Maeve O'Rourke and Deirdre Mahon he was appointed to the three person Truth Recovery Design Panel to work with survivors and victims of Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in Northern Ireland.
Their extensive report, Truth, Acknowledgement and Accountability (Report for the NI Executive) presented five primary and 87 secondary recommendations, accepted in full by all parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly 30092021-Truth-Recovery-Final-Report-FINAL-Online-Version.pdf (1.978Mb) The recommendations include an independent panel informing a full statutory public inquiry overseen by victims and survivors, supported by an independent research team.
This unprecedented truth investigation will be the first integrated, fully-funded process of its kind ensuring that families will have open access to all institutional records alongside schemes for redress, reparation and memorialization.
[8] He also stated that in his 'scholarship and teaching' he is 'a strong critic of the historical, cultural and political contexts of imperialism and their international legacy' and proposed that people's contribution to society should not be connected to 'British Empire'.
During the FA Cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest football clubs, a human crush resulted in the deaths of 97 people and injuries to 766 others.
[9] In the immediate aftermath Scraton received funding from Liverpool City Council to establish the Hillsborough Project to ensure external, independent scrutiny of the investigations and inquiries following the disaster.
Scraton attended personal hearings with several families and made three extensive submissions to the Scrutiny including his disclosure of the 'review and alteration' of police officers' statements.
He stated he was 'satisfied that Lord Taylor’s Inquiry team were in no way inhibited or impeded by the exclusion of material from the original statements' and that 'the allegation made by Professor Scraton of irregularity and malpractice is not substantiated'.
At the time of its first edition (1999), the book was described by Liverpool playwright Jimmy McGovern as a "brilliant achievement"[6] and The Independent stated that it told "a scarcely believable story of incompetence and mendacity".
Reflecting on the work of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, a fourth edition was about to be published in 2014 when, at the new inquests into the deaths of the (at the time) 96, the Coroner imposed stringent 'contempt of court' regulations on publications and broadcasting.
Following the 20th anniversary of the disaster in 2009 and the intervention of the then Minister of State for Culture, Andy Burnham, the Labour Government committed to the full disclosure of all available documents relating to Hillsborough, appointing the Hillsborough Independent Panel to manage the process of the disclosure, conduct research into all released documents and publish a comprehensive report explaining the Panel's work and how its findings added to public understanding of the context, circumstances and aftermath of the disaster.
Speaking in October 2012, Scraton said the findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panel – which also disclosed that 41 of the (at the time) 96 who died had the potential to survive had there been a more effective response to the emergency – showed "just how wrong he (LJ Stuart-Smith) was.
In the wake of the Report's publication, Scraton was commended in Parliament by Andy Burnham, Shadow Health Secretary, as contributing, ‘a huge service not just to the Hillsborough families but to this country’.