Can we abolish prison?

The writer of this book is Joe Sim, Emeritus Professor of Criminology at Liverpool John Moores University.  He has written extensively about prisons, the State, and punishment. He was a member of the Radical Altern-atives to Prison Collective and is currently a trustee of the charity INQUEST, which all explains why this book is so fascinating and so well-researched.

The concept behind this book is to lay out the facts about the British prison system as it exists today and to lay out the case for the abolition of this obviously shattered system. 

In England and Wales, prisons are physical and psychological grave-yards for the people inside them.

The use of prison as an actual sentence is barely two centuries old. Up until the Victorian era, prisons in this country were only used to hold debtors and those awaiting transportation to the colonies of Australia, America, and Canada. It was only once those colonies gained independence from Britain that the British prison system was created.

The writer starts with the creation of the prison system and then takes a look at some of the facts of how that system is faring today. These facts make very grim reading. For example: “Between 1978 and March 2022, nearly 6,900 people died in our prisons. Over 2,700 of these deaths were self-inflicted. And the deaths keep coming. In the year to September 2023, there were 304 deaths, 92 of which were self-inflicted, up 24 per cent on the previous year. There were over 64,000 incidents of self-harm – 175 per day – a rise of 21 per cent in a year.” When you see the stark facts laid out in black and white it brings home to you just how nightmarish the British prison system is for a lot of people.

The writer explains how the system was broken by political interference, and how every politician involved persistently followed the same regressive pathway despite knowing that it never worked before. If a sign of madness is to knowingly commit the same act repeatedly thinking it will lead to a better outcome, then the politicians and the prison system are utterly bonkers! The political response to the prisons crisis is to build more and bigger prisons, as if this will solve the problem instead of making it worse.

As the writer so eloquently explains: “If prison is the answer to crime and social harm then the wrong question is being asked. Prison is a malignant force and a moral disgrace.” This book tells it how it is and how it has been for two centuries, and the writer does not mince his words. It is long overdue that we be allowed to examine the prison system, its rules and stated aims, and wonder if there might be a better way of doing things. The trouble is that most politicians involved in the system know that prison and prisoners are a ‘low priority’ to the majority of voters, so they just fiddle about with it for a while and then move on.

The inequality of prison being used on the poor and less so on those with wealth and power is also a theme of this book. Writing in 1983, Steven Box noted: “We have, for far too long, ignored the crimes of the powerful, allowed the poor to be imprisoned scapegoats, and encouraged criminal justice personnel to act subversively. Justice has suffered and so have we all.” The last section of this book is titled ‘A World Without Prisons’, and it makes for interesting reading.

This is a book that should be read by anyone who wants to understand why and how the prison system has been broken. An excellent book.

What Do We Know and What Should We Do About Abolishing Prisons, by Joe Sim, was published in May 2025 by Sage Publications.