ABSTRACT

This chapter considers a question of central concern to criminologists, politicians and policy-makers, namely: ‘what are prisons for?’ In order to answer this question, the chapter focuses on a number of key debates concerning the role of the prison in England and Wales and the USA. As in the other substantive areas in criminology, this is a contested terrain, in that there are hotly debated theoretical positions articulated by different writers. These positions compete with each other, not only for domination in the academic world, but also, perhaps more crucially, they seek to influence the world of policy and politics.