Aristotle’s Prison: A Search for Humanity in Tragic Places
The LSE’s Mannheim Centre for Criminology is pleased to host Professor Alison Liebling for the Centre’s inaugural Annual Mannheim Lecture.
In her new book, Aristotle’s Prison: A Search for Humanity in Tragic Places, Alison draws on her professional lifetime’s work researching prisons. She shows how damaging and unsurvivable most prisons are, except in exceptional examples, from which we can learn a great deal. Two distinct paradigms can be identified in these contrasting examples: a punitive, new penology-minus, I-It paradigm, in which prisoners are treated cynically and as experienced objects, often leading to distress, anger and violence, versus a more person-centred, I-Thou paradigm, in which prisoners are treated as experiencing subjects and therefore find ways to grow and develop. This is a nuanced, demanding approach which acknowledges the tragedy of both crime and punishment. It requires a skilled workforce and morally gifted leadership. The book explores how just – or morally defensible – punishment is impossible in destructive, contemptuous, unsafe and over-used prisons because of the gratuitous suffering that is generated by such prisons. She considers how we might ‘reinsert the human’ in our approach to prisons and broader criminal justice and organisational life.
Meet our speaker, discussant and chair
Speaker: Professor Alison Liebling
Alison Liebling is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Institute of Criminology’s Prisons Research Centre. She has carried out research on life in prison since 1986 including work on suicides in prison, staff-prisoner relationships, and the moral quality of prison life. Her books include Prisons and their Moral Performance: A Study of Values, Quality and Prison Life (2004), The Effects of Imprisonment (2005, with Shadd Maruna), and The Prison Officer (2nd edition 2011). She is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Criminology (2017 and 2022 editions). She recently completed a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, carrying out the project, ‘Moral rules, social science and forms of order in prison’. Her book, arising from this Fellowship, is called Aristotle’s Prison: A Search for Humanity in Tragic Places (OUP, April 2026).
Discussant: Professor Nicola Lacey
Nicola Lacey is School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy at the London School of Economics. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, served as a member of the British Academy’s Policy Group on Prisons, which reported in 2014, and was from 2014-2019 the Academy’s nominee on the Board of the British Museum. In 2011 she was awarded the Hans Sigrist Prize by the University of Bern for scholarship on the rule of law in modern societies; in 2022 she won the Law and Society Association’s International Prize; and in 2025 she won the UK Law Teacher of the Year Award. Her publications include A Life of HLA Hart (OUP 2004); Women, Crime and Character: From Moll Flanders to Tess of the D’Urbervilles (2008); The Prisoners’ Dilemma (2008), and In Search of Criminal Responsibility (2016).
Chair: Dr Johann Koehler
Dr Johann Koehler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Policy and Director of the LSE’s Mannheim Centre for Criminology. Johann researches the origins, applications and limitations of evidence-based criminal justice.
Please come along and join the conversation. There will be a drinks reception to follow.
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