The Prison and the Varieties of Suffering: An Exchange

Alison Liebling and Leo Zaibert of the University of Cambridge, England, explore the modern prison as a site of suffering from the perspectives of empirical criminology and philosophical ethics. Prisons are the predominant means through which states punish wrongdoers. Punishment, by definition, is supposed to be painful, unpleasant, or a matter of making wrongdoers suffer (as Prof Leo Zaibert tends to put it). Reflecting on her long and path-breaking career devoted to understanding prisons, in her forthcoming book (working title: Aristotle’s Prison: A Search for Humanity and Justice), Prof Alison Liebling exposes the excesses of suffering and inhumanity often, perhaps increasingly, found in prisons. It is not merely that bad prisons happen to punish much more severely than they are supposed to do, but that the excessive suffering they inflict is often damaging and cruel in ways that are actually at odds with the declared rehabilitative goals of the criminal justice system. With Prof Liebling’s forthcoming book as a background, this conversation will explore some of the problematic aspects of modern prisons and punishment.