My husband, Mick Ryan, who has died aged 82, was emeritus professor of penal politics at the University of Greenwich, in London. Mick joined what was then Thames Polytechnic in 1973 to teach politics.
After some early collaborative work on London Docklands regeneration and parliamentary scrutiny of European legislation, he became interested in the organisation Radical Alternatives to Prison (RAP) and published his first book, The Acceptable Pressure Group, about it and the Howard League, in 1978.
He became increasingly involved in radical criminology. He was chair of Inquest, a charity providing expertise on state-related deaths and their investigation, and his book Lobbying from Below (1996) is still used as part of staff induction at Inquest. Mick was an inspirational teacher in politics and criminology and he was spoken of by former students with great appreciation.
The youngest of four children, Mick was born in Waterford, south-east Ireland, to Doris (nee Bouchier) and Robert Ryan. His father, a decorator from London, was working in the country modernising cinemas, but soon joined the army. When Mick was two years old, Doris took the children back to her home in Southampton, where she brought them up alone.
Mick had a long route to his academic career. Hindered by truancy and poor eyesight, he failed his 11-plus and was placed in a school in which students took no exams. After he won a regional chess championship, he was re-assessed by educational psychologists and eventually went to Itchen grammar school. From there he trained as a teacher at Bognor Regis College (now the University of Chichester), West Sussex, and then began work in a school in east London.
In London he met and married Elizabeth Wardle, a fellow teacher. She encouraged and supported him to get a degree, and he went to Leicester University in 1966. He and Elizabeth agreed to separate two years later. After graduating in politics, and teaching for a year, Mick did a postgraduate degree at the University of Sheffield, before joining Thames Polytechnic. He formally retired from Greenwich in 2007 but continued to teach part-time and supervise MA students.
In the 1980s Mick had joined the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control and worked with colleagues in producing books with a European dimension, for instance Western European Penal Systems (1995), with Joe Sim and Vincenzo Ruggiero. He remained committed to research and writing until Parkinson’s disease limited him.
Mick and I met at Thames Polytechnic, where I was a colleague and we married in 1976. I was a widow with three teenage children, Hugh, Kate and Tim, and Mick soon earned their love and respect. He is survived by me, his stepchildren, five grandchildren, Bea, James, Alice, Amy and Patrick, and by a sister, Mary.
