3 May 2006
Wednesday 3 May 2006 21:30-22:15 (Radio 3)
Could we live without prisons? Isabel Hilton and her guests explore a question which may well have been haunting the waking dreams of politicians and philosophers alike in recent weeks.
Playlist
In the last seven days if you turned on your radio, opened a newspaper or switched on the television, the chances are you will have heard something about the controversy in which the Home Secretary Charles Clarke has become embroiled. It all revolves around the question of how much responsibility he should bear for the fact that more than a thousand foreign prisoners were released without being considered for deportation. This thorny political question gives rise to several more fundamental ones. Is prison a necessary sanction in a civilised society? When did we first start to think that we couldn't live without prisons? And is it really remotely realistic to think that we could do without them altogether? In Night Waves Undercurrents this evening Isabel Hilton will be considering the social need and philosophical justification for prisons as well as exploring the alternatives with her guests, the criminologist, David Wilson, the legal theorist, Sean McConville, the intellectual historian, Catherine Belsey and Robert Whelan from Civitas, a think tank dedicated to the study of civil society.
