Professor Kristel Beyens
- Position
- Professor of Penology and Criminology
- Location
- Vrije Universiteit Brussel
- Faculty
- Department of Criminology
- Faculty profile link
- https://www.vub.be/en/people/kristel-beyens
- Research Group
- Crime & Society (CRiS)
Kristel’s research examines institutions, cultures, actors and practices of punishment from a sociological – penological approach. She has published on penal decision-making, penal policy and prison overcrowding and on the implementation of imprisonment, community service and electronic monitoring. She supervises PhD theses and research projects on early release and back-end sentencing, professional cultures of judges, prison officers, prison governors and EM monitoring officers, food in prison and irregular migrants in prison.
She was co-chair of an EU funded COST-Action on ‘Offender Supervision in Europe’ which involved about 70 researchers from more than 20 jurisdictions.
She has authored and co-edited several books, including Electronically Monitored Punishment (with Mike Nellis and Dan Kaminski, 2013). She is a founding member and former chair of the ESC Working Group on Community Sanctions, and member of the ESC Working Group on Sentencing and Penal Decision-Making and of the ESC Working Group of Prison Life and the Effects of Imprisonment.