Joe Sim

The future of prison health care: a critical analysis

In 1999, in response to the ongoing controversy surrounding prison health care, the Home Office and the NHS Executive published The Future Organization of Prison Health Care. This article, building on interviews and field notes from research conducted in the health care centres of three local prisons, analyses and critiques the documents premises, and argues that, until the formal and informal networks of penal power are addressed, then the documents hopes for change are unlikely to be realized.

‘Shock and Awe’: judicial responses to the riots

Justice, when its swift, is most effective; its about ensuring that they see the shock and awe of the criminal justice system. Because we represent society, we want to ensure that society is reflected in our courtrooms and we want them to experience what they made us experience. (Nazir Afzal, Chief Crown Prosecutor, Manchester; Channel 4 News, 11 August, 2011; emphasis added)

Managing the mendicant: regeneration and repression in Liverpool

In 2010, Liverpool was the most deprived local authority area in England. Its position was unchanged from earlier surveys conducted in 2004 and 2007. Almost a quarter of Englands 100 most deprived smaller areas were located in the city (Liverpool City Council, 2011). The city was also the ‘easiest place to die – 35 per cent above the national average – …’ (Armstrong, 2012) while one third of its children lived in poverty.. What has been the local states response to this dire state of affairs? It has developed a strategy built on governing poverty through regenerating the city, particularly its central shopping hub.

For Stuart Hall

Samuel Beckett, one of Stuart Halls favourite writers, once observed that the purpose of art was to leave a ‘stain upon the silence’. So too with Stuarts life and work. His cultural and political interventions were not about silence. Rather, through the exhilarating cadences in his voice, and the warm embrace of his laughter and chuckle, he used the power of the spoken word to turn heads, capture yearnings and suggest possibilities that could, with the right politics, be reconfigured into probabilities. His work was insurgent and redemptive; the intertwining of both provided the strategic base for thinking that a better world was possible.