Sussex Salon

The current programme of prison reform is underway ushering in an era of building ‘new and improved’ mega prisons to house a prison population that has doubled since the 90’s from 40,000 to over 85,000.

 Michael Howard famously cried in 1993 that ‘Prison Works’, a philosophy that apparently still remains prevalent. But with perpetually high rates of re-offending and increasing costs has the time come to ask more radical questions around the purpose and appropriateness of imprisonment as a punishment in the 20th Century.

Is it time to ask whether we should have prisons at all? In short, does prison work?

Chaired by Dr John Dearlove, with Dr David Maguire, University of Oxford and Marie Hutton, Lecturer in Law, University of Sussex.