CCJS Annual Lecture: The Covid Crisis and the 'New Normal’ in British Prisons

The Centre for Criminal Justice Studies Lecture: The Covid Crisis and the ‘New Normal’ in British Prisons.

Abstract

During the Covid pandemic prisons in England and Wales established a sweeping ‘lockdown’ policy that left most of the prison population living under conditions of solitary confinement. Prisoners feared that this could become the ‘new normal’ in British prisons, and these fears have proven to be well founded with many prisons still running severely curtailed regimes.

In this talk, Prof. Maruna describes an innovative ‘Participatory Action Research’ project he was involved with along with the User Voice organisation that sought to give a voice to those living under these extraordinary conditions in 2021. He will highlight implications of that research for both prison research and efforts at reform.

About the Speaker

Shadd Maruna is Professor of Criminology at Queen’s University Belfast. Previously, he has worked at the University of Cambridge, the University of Manchester, and Rutgers University, where he was the Dean of the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice (USA).

His research focuses on desistance from crime and implications for prisoner reintegration. He is the author or editor of seven books, including, Rehabilitation: Beyond the Risk Paradigm, Fifty Key Thinkers in Criminology, and, most recently, The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (with Alison Liebling and Lesley McAra).

His book Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives was named the Outstanding Contribution to Criminology in 2001. In 2012, he received the inaugural Research Medal from the Howard League for Penal Reform for his research’s impact on real world practice in the criminal justice system. He is currently President of the American Society of Criminology (ASC), the largest and oldest criminology society in the world.

Date and Time

14 March, 4pm-5pm.

Location

Moot Court, Liberty Building (LT 1.28), School of Law, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT or Online via Zoom

Registration

All welcome. This is a free event, though registration is required via Eventbrite.

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