Prison Abolition

Thinking Allowed

BBC

Science, Society & Culture

4.4 • 973 Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

PRISON ABOLITION: Laurie Taylor talks to Tommie Shelby, Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, about a new study which considers the case for ending imprisonment. Mass incarceration and its devastating impact on black communities have been widely condemned as neoslavery or “the new Jim Crow.” Can the practice of imprisonment be reformed, or does justice require it to be ended altogether? They’re joined by Clare McGlynn, Professor of Law at Durham University, who questions 'anti carceral' approaches from a feminist perspective – do they serve the interests of survivors of male violence against women and girls?

Producer: Jayne Egerton

Transcript

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0:00.0	Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of
0:07.0	Happiness Podcast.
0:08.0	For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want
0:14.4	to share that science with you.
0:16.1	And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley.
0:19.4	I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that
0:25.4	calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:37.0	This is a Thinking Loud Podcasts from the BBC and for more details and much, much more about thinking aloud go to our website at BBC.co.
0:47.0	UK.
0:48.0	Hello, it's now more than half a century since Stan Cohen and I embarked on a study of long-term
0:54.3	imprisonment, a study in which we heavily criticized the penal conditions faced by
0:59.6	those serious offenders who in the wake of the abolition of capital
1:03.3	punishment had been given dramatically extended sentences in prison.
1:07.0	But we were hardly alone in criticizing British prisons.
1:10.6	Writers who came before an after us, chronicled other serious problems,
1:15.8	overcrowded cells, the confinement of the mentally ill, the lack of educational
1:20.4	facilities, the in alternatives to prison. And well, how good have we been at remedying some of those defects?
1:37.0	In a remarkably hard-hitting and well-informed article in last Saturday's times,
1:42.0	Matthew Paris summed up the answer in a single headline.
1:46.0	Prisons are a disgrace, but no one will say so.
1:51.0	Neither can their faults be overlooked because they are full of demons and devils.
	...

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