Her Majesty's Prison Service Recruited directly from Cambridge, he joined
Her Majesty's Prison Service as an Assistant
Governor at
HMP Wormwood Scrubs in 1984. It is said by some that at the age of 29 he became the youngest governor in the country. While at HMP Woodhill, Wilson helped design and managed the two units for the 12 most disruptive prisoners in the country. This experience brought him into contact with some of the most notorious offenders of the last 30 years, including
Charles Bronson and
Dennis Nilsen. Wilson has written about these experiences in his memoir,
My Life with Murderers.
Professor of Criminology After a short time with the
Prison Reform Trust, Wilson joined
University of Central England in Birmingham (now
Birmingham City University), was given a professorship in 2000 and made emeritus Professor in 2017. A member of the
British Society of Criminology, his research covers aspects of prisons and imprisonment, murder and serial murder. Wilson has advised various police forces as a criminologist, and in 2006 was also involved in the Ipswich serial murder case, as an advisor to
Sky News. Subsequently,
Steve Wright was arrested and prosecuted for this series of murders. Wilson acted as: Vice-chair of the
Howard League for Penal Reform (1998–2014); Vice-president of New Bridge; and Chair of the
Forum on Prisoner Education (2000–2006). He is a former Chair of the Commission on English Prisons Today, whose president was
Cherie Blair, and is the current Chair of the Friends of Grendon Prison. In 2012, he was made a National Teaching Fellow of England and Wales. He is a regular contributor to the press and writes mostly for
The Guardian and the
Daily Mail. He writes a regular column in
The Herald (Glasgow). On television he presented four series of
The Crime Squad for
BBC1, and also
Leave No Trace and
Too Young to Die? about the plight of young people on death row in the USA. On
BBC2 he presented
Who Killed Ivan the Terrible? and was an expert on the game show
Identity. On
Channel 5 he co-presented
Banged Up, which was nominated for a
Royal Television Society award. Wilson developed and presented two series of
Killers Behind Bars: The Untold Story, which was developed initially from the standpoint of an academic look at criminal profiling to counter that shown in fictional series such as
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. He co-presents Channel 4's
In the Footsteps of Killers and is a regular on ITV's
This Morning. Wilson appeared on
BBC Radio 4's
Ramblings series on 1 October 2020, walking with
Clare Balding from
Wicken, Northamptonshire to
Leckhampstead, Buckinghamshire whilst discussing his life and the murder of Margaret McLaughlin in Carluke, Lanarkshire,. Wilson gives public lectures and delivers lectures for schools through the company Ecademi. He has made several theatre tours – most recently in 2024 with the novelist Marcel Theroux. In 2016 the TV drama
Dark Angel attributed his book ''Mary Ann Cotton: Britain's First Female Serial Killer'' as its inspiration. ==Personal life==