Speaker: Professor Pat Carlen, Honorary Professor of Criminology, Keele University
'Imprisonment and the Penal Body Politic: The Cancer of Disciplinary Governance'

Commentator: Dr Eileen Baldry, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Work, University of New South Wales

Chair: Professor Chris Cunneen, Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Sydney

Date: Tuesday 4 October 2005, 5.30pm – 7.30 pm
Venue: Assembly Hall, Level 4 (street level) Sydney University Law School, 173-175 Phillip Street, Sydney
Registration: There is no registration fee for this seminar.

Seminar Abstract:
During the last couple of decades, disciplinary technique has achieved such a stranglehold over penal politics, the management of prisons and all oppositional critique (including that of  prison reformers, prison staff and academics) that few have questioned the seeming inevitability of ever-increasing public punitiveness and ever-rising prison populations. Yet there have, however, recently been signs that both politicians and public are again waking up to the fact that imprisonment neither delivers all that politicans promise (in terms of crime reduction), nor all that the public wants (in terms of risk reduction). In this lecture, therefore, it will be argued that for those who doubt the efficacy in reducing crime, this is most probably a good time to speak up and argue for a contraction of prison populations and renewed experimentation with non-custodial methods of responding to crime.

A public seminar in the Beyond Punishment series, engaging in critical debate about prisons, community programs and related issues, co-sponsored by the NSW Department of Corrective Services.

For further details contact: Institute of Criminology, 173-175 Phillip Street, Sydney NSW 2000. DX 983, Sydney. Ph: (61 2) 9351 0239. Fax: (61 2) 9351 0200. criminology@law.usyd.edu.au