It’s Episode 81 of The Criminology Academy podcast! On today’s episode, we have Professor Ben Crewe on the podcast. We discuss prison systems and experiences in Norway and England & Wales, as well as the Nordic Exceptionalism Thesis and a systematic comparative analysis of prison life!
Ben Crewe is Professor of Penology & Criminal Justice, and Deputy Director of the Prisons Research Centre, at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. He first joined the Institute of Criminology in 2001, as a post-doctoral researcher, having trained as a sociologist as an undergraduate at Cambridge, a Masters student at London School of Economics, and a PhD student at the University of Essex. He is interested in almost all aspects of prison life, in particular the prisoner experience, prison social life and culture, penal power, staff-prisoner relationships, prison management and penal policy, prison quality, and the impact of political, economic and cultural factors on the nature of imprisonment. His most recent research projects have included a five-year research project titled ‘Penal policy making and the prisoner experience: a comparative analysis’, which has involved extensive fieldwork in England & Wales and Norway and a longitudinal study (with Dr Susie Hulley and Dr Serena Wright) or prisoners serving long life sentences from an early age. He is one of the founding editors of the journal Incarceration, and is one of the series editors of the Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology (with Yvonne Jewkes and Thomas Ugelvik). He is also a Trustee of the Prison Reform Trust.
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Episode Transcriptions Available Below for Download: Word (.docx) and PDF (.pdf)
Coming soon.
Get in touch with Ben:
University of Cambridge Website // bc247 AT cam.ac.uk // Twitter
This is the article authored by Ben and his colleagues that was discussed in this episode of The Crim Academy:
Crewe, B., Ievins, A., Larmour, S., Laursen, J., Mjåland, K., & Schliehe, A. (2023). Nordic penal exceptionalism: A comparative, empirical analysis. The British Journal of Criminology, 63(2), 424-443. [Article Link].