Moving towards a post-penal society

I wrote this contribution to the Future We Deserve, a curated collaborative online project. It re-iterates some thoughts to responding to crises whilst also providing a brief overview of prison and its purpose.

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If there is nothing else the current economic crisis has taught the modern Western world it’s this: hyperincarceration is not

Justice Perestroika: managing prisons in a time of crisis

That sounds more like the title of a book or a social movement, but I just wanted to commit to writing a few thoughts about the possible scenarios facing us in the “developed” world in the coming months and years. Perhaps someday sooner rather than later I could gather some of these ideas in something a little more solid than an online repository, but until then I shall document these thoughts here.

Many of you will of course recognise that title as a reference to