News

Abolitionism and decarceration: Our summer reading list

As the summer holidays get underway, even if you're staying at home for your holiday, we thought you might be interested in reading our back catalogue of articles on prison abolitionism and decarceration. 

31 July 2020
News

Punishment is the pandemic

Our Chair of Trustees, Charlie Weinberg, has written a piece on the problems of punishment for the website of Abolition, the US-based journal of radical and insurgent politics.

In the piece, Charlie develops the argument she first explored in this article on our website, about the difference between containment and control.

What it is about punishment that makes it simultaneously both...

12 May 2020
Comment

Prison violence and the limits of reform

In May last year I was among more than a hundred organisational representatives who trooped over to the (unfortunately named given current events in Syria and Iraq) Isis youth prison in south east London.

4 July 2019
Comment

Getting out of the prisons crisis

There are at least two ways of thinking about the prisons crisis and about what it would mean to get out the crisis.

First, we can think about the prison crisis as a crisis in prisons...

25 April 2019
News

Conference cancellation: Prison abolition in the UK

We are saddened to announce that the conference, Prison Abolition in the UK, planned for 23 and 24 May, has been cancelled.

Unfortunately, one of our conference partners has, in recent weeks, been subjected to concerted pressure by those intent on disrupting the conference. In the circumstances, they felt they had no option but to pull out.

As an organisation, the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies walks the...

6 March 2019
News

Major conference on prison abolition in May 2019

The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and the Harm & Evidence Research Collaborative at The Open University, in partnership with Professor Joe Sim of Liverpool John Moores University, will be holding a major conference on prison abolition in the UK in 2019.

The conference will be on Thursday 23 and Friday 24 May, at The Open University campus in Milton Keynes.

The prison system in the UK is in ongoing, systemic crisis. While politicians pay lip service to the need to reduce prisoner numbers, further growth and expansion are far more likely...

20 December 2018
News

Close prisons rather than try to fix them

Our Director Richard spoke about the prisons crisis at a meeting of the Friends of Le Monde Diplomatique earlier this week.

Richard said that that 'the prisons crisis is not, fundamentally, a crisis in prisons: one that can be resolved if the right reforms, the right action, is taken. It is a crisis of prisons: of our unbending attempts to treat a complex set of social problems - violence, drug,...

8 February 2018
Speech

The prisons crisis. Alternatives to incarceration

Thank you for the invitation to speak this evening on the prison crisis. I admire the work and values of Le Monde Diplomatique. It is good to be among those committed to supporting its ongoing, and important, work.

6 February 2018
Comment

Holloway: The beginning of a revolution?

At this year’s Conservative party conference, Michael Gove apparently heralded in a new era for criminal justice reform. Prisons need to be managed better, he said. People in prison need to...

10 December 2015
News

Prison building 'short-sighted and contradictory'

The Chancellor, George Osborne, has set out his priorities for the Spending Review and identified the country's prisons 'as an example of one public service badly in need of reform'.

Mr Osborne called for a need to focus on rehabilitation and training  to be pursued by Justice...

9 November 2015