In this episode, we ask whether prisons do the jobs they were originally created to do. Has there been an increasingly enlightened approach to balancing reform, care and punishment? What did this look like in past regimes, and where is our current system succeeding and failing?

To answer these questions, we spoke to Dr David Scott from The OU's School of Social Policy & Criminology, who has published more than 15 books on issues around crime, punishment and justice - including his most recent work Against Imprisonment. He is a former coordinator of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control, the most established critical criminology forum in the world today.  He’s also a member of the Academic Advisory Board for INQUEST, a charity supporting the bereaved families of those who die in state custody.