Books
Dirk’s newest books can be found here.
Bio
Dirk van Zyl Smit is Emeritus Professor of Comparative and International Penal Law of the University of Nottingham, from which he retired at the end of July 2020. At the University of Cape Town he is a Senior Research Scholar and Emeritus Professor of Criminology. Previously, from 1982 until the end of 2005, he was Professor of Criminology there, and also Dean of the Faculty of Law from 1990 to 1995. He has also been a visiting professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Catholic University of Leuven, and a Senior Fulbright Research Fellow and later a visiting Global Professor at New York University School of Law in 2012 and 2017.
Dirk’s academic qualifications are BA (1970) and LLB (1972) degrees from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and a PhD in law (1981) from the University of Edinburgh. He was admitted as an Advocate of the Supreme Court of South Africa in 1973. In 2008 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Law from the University of Greifswald in Germany. In 2022 he was A-rated as a researcher by the National Research Foundation in South Africa
Dirk’s books include Life Imprisonment: a Global Human Rights Analysis (with Catherine Appleton) (Harvard 2019), which in 2020 received the European Society of Criminology Book Award and the Outstanding Book Award of the Division of International Criminology of the American Society of Criminology, and Principles of European Prison Law and Policy: Penology and Human Rights (with Sonja Snacken) (Oxford 2009). He is co-editor of Punishment and Society and the author of more than 140 academic articles, books and book chapters.
Dirk is actively involved in law reform. In South Africa he was the primary consultant for the Correctional Services Act 1998 and a member of the National Council on Correctional Services from 1995 to 2004. He was project leader of the committee of the South African Law Commission investigating sentencing and author of its Report. He has also drafted prison legislation for the governments of Malawi, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bangladesh. He was chair of the Board of Penal Reform International until November 2021.
Dirk was expert adviser to the Council of Europe on the new European Prison Rules and the European Rules on Juvenile Offenders subject to Sanctions or Measures and is currently advising on a new Recommendation on Prisons and Mental Health. In 2012 he was part of the legal team that appeared for the applicant in Vinter v United Kingdom, in which the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights established that all life sentenced prisoners must have a reasonable prospect of release.
For the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Dirk has drafted Handbooks on Alternatives to Imprisonment, International Transfer of Sentenced Persons and Incorporating the Nelson Mandela Rules into National Prison Legislation: A Model Prison Act and a Commentary.