The CJC is delighted to have been awarded funding by the ESRC to host an event as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science on Saturday 14 November 2015.

The CJC multi-format event aims to bring together different perspectives on the experience of punishment, in order to raise awareness of, promote social science research on and generate debate on prisoner wellbeing and its consequences to criminal justice policy and practice. The full-day event will encourage an interactive open debate between academics and non-academics through drawing on a range of perspectives on the topic, from that of those responsible for formulating and implementing prison policy, and that of social scientists researching punishment and criminal justice, to that of those with first-hand, lived experiences of punishment within prisons. Interactive sessions will include: screening and discussion of the film ‘Herman’s House’ (a movie about the communication between an architect and a life prisoner in the US); a workshop run by the Empty Cages Collective about the conditions and experience of imprisonment in England and Wales; and an exhibition of prisoners’ creative self-expression (letters, photography, paintings, etc.) followed by discussion.