Greg Newbold is a sociology professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He also did 7.5 years in prison for selling drugs. Newbold is a part of a research group called “convict criminology” which sees this firsthand experience as a valuable asset in understanding the criminal system. I spoke to him about his time in prison and convict criminology.
ResearchGate: How did this all start? How did you become a convict criminologist?
Greg Newbold: I went to prison in 1975 for selling drugs. I got 7.5 years. At that time, I was doing a M.A. at Auckland University. I was planning to do a Ph.D. in the U.S. but being busted in 1975 changed all that. When I finally got out in 1980, I won a scholarship and did a Ph.D. on the history of the maximum security prison in New Zealand.
RG: When you were entering academia was your past considered an asset?
Newbold: Well there were positives and negatives. There was resistance at the university to employing someone who had served a long sentence for selling drugs. It ended up being an asset to me because I was employed to teach criminology. Most criminologists are armchair criminologists, getting their knowledge from textbooks and teaching from textbooks. Whereas I write my own textbooks, based on my own research and experience.
