Newbold retires

Stuff reports:

A Christchurch lecturer – who served time in prison for selling heroin before becoming one of the country’s top criminologists – has retired.

Greg Newbold has stood down from his teaching role at the University of Canterbury (UC) after a 30-year career in academia.

Newbold received a seven-and-a-half year sentence for drug dealing in 1975. He completed a master’s degree from the University of Auckland during his imprisonment.

UC criminal justice director and senior lecturer Jarrod Gilbert said Newbold got much of his education in prison so “brought lived-experience to teaching criminology”.

“He did a reasonably significant prison sentence. He was at university when he was arrested, so he was always intellectually inclined.”

Newbold went on to obtain a PhD and was named a professor at UC in 2009, where he taught criminal justice and social history.

“He had this brilliant mix between being very smart but also having that lived experience,” Gilbert said.

Newbold’s first hand experience with prison made him very realistic about what the prison system can and can not achieve. He was an excellent contributor to the area of criminology.