This event will celebrate Dr Nasrul Ismail’s new book, The English Prison Health System After a Decade of Austerity, published by Routledge.

Please note change of date

Austerity has reconfigured and scaled back the governance and delivery of public services and negatively affected society’s most vulnerable groups. The English Prison Health System After a Decade of Austerity, 2010–2020: The Failed Political Experiment opens up the closed world of English prisons to examine its impact on prison health governance and healthcare delivery.

This book launch will explore how austerity—a decade-long, large-scale political experiment—has not only expanded the national debt but also eroded the prison health system and perpetuated a cycle of punishment resulting in sicker prisoners. Drawing on eighty-seven interviews and a swath of data from existing longitudinal and economic analyses, Dr Ismail will discuss how austerity has resulted in high rates of recidivism, a diminished welfare state, increased inequality, and punitive excess.

Despite a decade of failure, there is a marked political reluctance to dispense with austerity, with the government continuing to produce the same result. As the spectre of recession grows, these failures become ever more perilous. Proposals for changing existing policies will be addressed and debated.

This event will be of interest to anyone eager to reflect on how political and economic structures can affect the governance and delivery of healthcare services in marginalised communities, not just in prisons, and certainly not only in England.

Drinks and snacks will be provided. 

Places are free of charge but must be booked via Eventbrite.

Speakers: 

• Dr Nasrul Ismail (Author and Lecturer in Criminology, University of Bristol)
• Dr Vicky Canning (Associate Professor in Criminology and Director of the Poverty and Social Justice Centre, University of Bristol)
• Professor Vanessa Barker (Professor of Sociology at Stockholm University and Editor in Chief of Punishment & Society Journal)

This book is available via the Routledge website. Use the code ADC23 for a 30% discount at checkout

Book reviews:

"This is an important new contribution, examining how a decade of austerity policy has impeded the governance and delivery of healthcare in English prisons. Drawing on detailed health statistics, interviews with key stakeholders, and official publications, the author unravels the complex relationships between economics, prison management, and the decline in health and safety in prisons since 2010."

- Professor Alison Liebling, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

"How has it come to this? The prisons crisis is most acute in the prison healthcare system and this author uses that focus to argue that the crisis is a consequence of an ideologically constructed austerity programme. Based on interviews with 87 policy makers and ranging across sociological, legal, political and economic literature, Nasrul Ismail provides a sharp and distinctive analysis of the prisons crisis that should be on the reading list of everyone trying to understand the origins of the prisons crisis and the problems that beset prison healthcare."

- Professor Nick Hardwick, Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom