Jason in the Guardian

Jason Warr (one of our PhD students) has made the news in a debate about whether prison education is working: Guardian 30 January.

Festival of Ideas: does prison work?

Next Tuesday the Festival of Ideas starts with several events, including two that are particularly relevant for us as criminologists! Hopefully there will be many of us to get involved in the debates:

036 Does prison work?
Friday 21 October, 6:00PM - 7:15PM
How can institutionalisation be prevented, are there effective alternatives to prison and what circumstances discourage repeat offending?
Speakers include Jennifer Rubin from RAND, John Podmore, Offender Health, Department of Health; Charles Young from the London Anti-Crime Education Service, Professor Larry Sherman, Institute of Criminology and the chair, Professor Hugh Wilmott from the Judge Business School.

071 How to stay out of prison
Saturday 22 October, 12:30PM - 1:30PM
Is it possible to deter people from crime? The London Anti-Crime Education Service gives a presentation of its work including a mock-up prison cell and talks by mentors who work with young people.
Charles Young from the innovative London Anti-Crime Education Service demonstrates the brutal reality of life in prison and how he and his mentors deter young people from committing crime with the aid of a pop-up prison cell.

Prison Law Blog: the current state of American prisons

I wanted to let you know about the interesting Prison Law Blog, maintained and written by Sara Mayeux, a graduate of Stanford Law School and U.S. history Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University. She mainly writes about the state of the prison and prisoners in California and other states in the U.S. and gives an insight in the conditions of American prisons by discussing news items and legal decisions concerning prisons.

Distinctions and Distinctiveness in the Work of Prison Officers: Legitimacy and Authority Revisited

Tomorrow the Institute of Criminology’s 13th Annual Nigel Walker Lecture will be given by professor Alison Liebling

The purpose of this lecture is to provide a framework for thinking about the work of prison officers, and in particular, their relationships with prisoners. Drawing on important recent theoretical contributions to the policing literature, several empirical research projects on the work of prison officers and staff-prisoner relationships conducted by the author and colleagues, and various analyses of the quality of prison life as evaluated by prisoners, this lecture explores the ‘flow of power’ in prison through staff-prisoner relationships. It is a well-known maxim that relationships are ‘at the heart’ of prison life (Home Office 1984). In this lecture, I develop and illustrate this proposition, arguing that the moral quality of prison life is enacted by the attitudes and conduct of prison officers. There are important distinctions to be made in their work: between ‘good’ and ‘right’ relationships; ‘tragic’ and ‘cynical’ perspectives; ‘reassurance’ and ‘relational’ safety; ‘good’ and ‘bad’ confidence; and between ‘positive peer relations’ and ‘oppositional peer loyalty’. These cultural and philosophical distinctions are largely ‘unseen’ but decisive in shaping the prison’s moral and social climate. Failure to find the “ethical space” necessary for reflection on officers’ conceptual understandings, attitudes and practices, brings about serious organisational and operational risks, and threats to justice. The best prison officer work can be described using these kinds of distinctions.

Alison Liebling is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, and Director of the Prisons Research Centre, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge.


Wednesday 26th May 2010, 18.00-19.30 hrs

Venue: Institute of Criminology (Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge)

BOOKING ESSENTIAL

To book a seat please contact: Joanne Garner, Institute of Criminology, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DA Tel: 01223 335360, Email: jf225@cam.ac.uk (When booking, please state if you have problems with mobility)

John Hegley poem

John Hegley was on Arthur Smith's Balham Bash the other night and read out a poem which I thought I would share. You can hear it here (it starts about 8 minutes in).

"This is a piece about when I was working in Reading jail and getting some of the prisoners to write some poems. We went on radio Berkshire and read out the poems but some of the listeners phoned in and they were angry that the prisoners were seeming to have too easy a time of it, so this is in response to that:

The Ending of the Offending

For prisoners playing the price,

Just a punishment may not suffice,

The best use of time,

May be learning to rhyme,

Making sure it's not too nice a process of course; you don't want people thinking that a life of crime leads to free poetry workshops."

The Proliferation of Prisons

Hat tip: the Global Sociology Blog.

This video shows the proliferation of prisons in the US made by Paul Rucker As the glob soc says, a timeline would be nice (although you could say that the abstract nature of the video adds to its appeal), and it's a bit long but I love the way the audio links in with the movement. I also like the way the outline of the US slowly appears as more and more prisons get created- if only the subject of hyper-imprisonment wasn't so depressing...

Reducing the Prison Population: Talk by David Howarth MP

David Howarth MP: Reducing the Prison Population

Monday 15th February
1pm
G24, Law Faculty, Cambridge

Our local MP and Liberal Democrat justice spokesman, David Howarth, is returning to Cambridge after his successful talk last year. With prison numbers at an all-time high and the General Election just around the corner, it’s never been a better time to question one of the country’s leading politicians about the need for penal reform.

For more information, please check the Facebook Event

Presented by the Cambridge University Howard League Society.

Interesting radio programmes

There have been two interesting radio programmes on Radio 4 in the last few weeks. The first, hosted by sociologist Laurie Taylor, is on the topic of white collar crime, which you can listen to here. The second is on the topic of prison clothing, which you can listen to here.