David Farrington 1944-2024

My friend and colleague David Farrington was indubitably the most influential and inspirational criminological psychologist of his generation. He was perhaps most renowned for his scientific rigour that he took to the seminal Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD). Very sadly he passed away on 5 November 2024 from Motor Neurone Disease. 

David was born in Ormskirk on 7 March 1944 and went to Grammar school winning a highly competitive scholarship to study at Cambridge. His career became replete with prestigious awards including the Stockholm Prize in Criminology (criminology's Nobel Prize).

It is difficult not to become emotional as I recall my earliest encounters with David, such are the fondness of my memories. I first met him in 1989 at Cambridge, where David had studied as an undergraduate then postgraduate and gone on to be a member of staff – at the Institute of Criminology in the Faculty of Law. I was then new to the world of prisons and criminological psychology, but having been stationed at HMP Highpoint in Suffolk, I decided to visit the institute of Criminology at Cambridge and met with David (then a Reader) in my role as a (trainee) psychologist. He was welcoming and kind. 

Later that year he tutored on the MSc in criminological psychology module that I undertook as part of my training. His encyclopaedic knowledge of the literature on developmental pathways to criminality was amazing. He was – by a head and shoulders, and by common consensus – the most academically impressive of all who taught us on the module. His scientific rigour was one of the features that distinguished his work in the field, and he was justifiably proud of that.  

David was down to earth too, with a very personable manner, as comfortable talking to the cleaner as any top flight academic or senior official. He gave generously of his time with us as students – even venturing out with our MSc cohort to the 'Pink Flamingo', a nightclub conveniently located not far from the lecture rooms.

We kept in touch and some years later I had the joy of working with David on the evaluation of the Military Corrective Training Centre (MCTC) programme in Colchester for Young Offenders. The cultural differences between the MoD and Home Office were something to behold, we both observed. Of course, we were both impeccably professional at all such joint planning and evaluation meetings. But down the pub afterwards a mutual favourite moment from the meetings was when an official explained that his minister (Anne Widdicombe) would not 'roll over' for Nicholas (the MoD minister) on a point around evaluation. We both could not get the image out of our heads of the two of them 'rolling over'. Another was the suggestion that the efficacy of the intervention could be measured by the distance away that a young offender saluted the prison and military staff, with the prediction being that the further away the young offender was when they saluted the more effective the programme had been. Especially in view of David's commitment to empirical rigour I always thought that he did incredibly well to observe the discipline of keeping a straight face. I remember countless times when we only stopped laughing to drink our beer.

The 2016 interview that his daughter, Alice, also a psychologist, did with him for The Psychologist pretty much sums up his contributions not only to psychology but also as a kind, caring and compassionate soul who sounds like he was a great dad and grandad too. David was proud that one of his three daughters is a clinical psychologist, and two of his ten grandchildren are studying psychology at university. 

He will be so missed. 

Professor Graham Towl

Psychology Department

Durham University