Transforming justice: the interplay of social change and policy reforms
A well-functioning justice system is fundamental to social wellbeing.
Publications and more
Past events
RES Summit: Economics of the Justice System - 2nd December 2025
For this year’s annual RES Summit, RES President and Transforming Justice co-lead Imran Rasul selected the theme Economics of the Justice System. The event featured Imran alongside Rocco d’Este, Associate Professor at the University of Sussex, and Randi Hjalmarsson, Professor of Economics at the University of Gothenburg. The panel discussed new research on prolific offending, victimisation and public perceptions of the criminal justice system, the labour-market impacts of criminal records (including the role of firms and managers), and the design of prison systems. See here for the recording and further details.
IFS Economics of the Justice System Workshop - 22nd November 2024
This event featured speakers from LSE, University of Oxford, University of York, University of Exeter and the University of Bristol speaking on subjects such as violence in prisons, remote working and neighborhood crime, the impact of Sure Start on crime and economic barriers to justice in Brazil. See here for the full agenda.
Abi Adams
Abi's research sits within Applied Microeconomics, often focused on the econometrics of consumer and family choice.
Imran Rasul
Imran is Director of the CPP Institute and Professor of Economics at University College London
Joe Tomlinson
Joe is Professor of Administrative Law at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London.
Sarah Cattan
Sarah is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Monica Costa Dias
Monica is an IFS Deputy Research Director, CPP Institute Co-director and Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol.
Magdalena Domínguez
Magdalena is a Senior Research Economist at the IFS. Her research focuses on issues related to the economics of crime, networks & place-based policies
Elisa Facchetti
Elisa is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics & Finance of University of Rome Tor Vergata and a Research Associate at IFS.
Emla Fitzsimons
Emla Fitzsimons is a Professor of Economics at the University College London Institute of Education and a Research Fellow at the IFS.
Hikaru Kawarazaki
Hikaru is a postdoctoral fellow and works in the Justice sector. He received his PhD in economics from University College London in November 2025.
Luca Rizzotti
Luca joined IFS in 2025 as a Research Economist and works in the Justice sector. He received his PhD in economics from Brown University in May 2025.
Joost Sijthoff
Joost is a PhD student at UCL.
Cassandra Somers-Joce
Cassandra is a Non-Stipendiary Lecturer at Oxford and Research Assistant at KCL, she is working with IFS staff on the Transforming Justice project
Partners:
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A well-functioning justice system is fundamental to social well-being, supporting an inclusive and secure society and underpinning wider trust in the state. The justice system in England and Wales has been changed dramatically over the last decade through large-scale reductions in funding and a sequence of major procedural reforms intended to modernise the system. Despite the scale of change, and the central importance of justice to everyday social and economic life, to date there has been limited systematic economic and quantitative analyses of the impacts of these changes on access to justice, people’s pathways through the justice system, and wider effects on well-being for those experiencing the justice system. This project will address these knowledge gaps using research drawn primarily from the administrative datasets curated through the Ministry of Justice’s ‘Data First’ programme, funded by ADR-UK. The project will range across many of the system’s jurisdictions including administrative, civil, family, and criminal.
