Routinely convened in the United Kingdom in response to institutional failure (Mitchell et al.,
2020,p.4), public inquiries are an invaluable resource for criminologists (Schlembach and Hart, 2022,
p.375). For example, the Grenfell Tower inquiry has informed analyses of the tragedy as a form of
state- corporate violence (Tombs, 2020), while the Brook House inquiry has been used to examine
power dynamics in immigration removal centres (Aitken, 2024). Indeed, criminological engagement
with public inquiries has generated rich theoretical and normative insights. At the same time, it
has been suggested that this literature can at times lack empirical evidence and rely on normative
grounds (MacGiollabhui, 2025, p.2). My proposed research seeks to investigate this empirical
deficit by developing an operational framework to distinguish normative from empirical scholarship,
and by mapping the methods and approaches used in criminological research on public inquiries. In
doing so, it contributes to a core part of the debate on secure, effective, and trusted
institutions by strengthening the empirical basis on which public inquiries are assessed.
The research will adopt a three-strand approach. The first strand develops an operational framework
within which distinctions between empirical and non-empirical approaches can be understood. The
second strand applies a quantitative content analysis of method and approach to a corpus of peer-
reviewed articles on public inquiries from criminology journals and allied disciplines to identify
empirical and non-empirical work. The third strand then disaggregates the empirical subset for
further examination.