Alumni Highlights
Professor Richard Wortley AM

International Leadership Award - 2018

Over his career of more than 40 years, Dr Richard Wortley has developed an international reputation in the study and prevention of crime. The implementation of his research has led to international changes in situational crime prevention. Richard started in 1976 as a psychologist In the NSW prison system, where he worked for ten years in a variety of facilities. Following the 1976 to 1978 Nagle Royal Commission into prisons, Richard was able to contribute to the redesign of management practices. From here he began thinking about how immediate environments promote or constrain criminal activity.

Richard was part of a team in the mid-2000s that pioneered the application of situational crime prevention methods to the problem of child sexual abuse. The NSW Commission for Children and Young People drew on these methods to create the ‘Working with Children Check’ and The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, has also adopted the concepts in its public hearings and research concerning child safe organisations.

As head of the University College London Department of Security and Crime Science he has been at the forefront of developments in crime prevention, including world-firsts in the anticipation and prevention of future crime. In January 2018 Richard was made a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia, for significant service to criminology and psychology through the development of security and crime science education.