British prisons: everything you wanted to know

In June 2021, Prison History project lead Rosalind Crone was interviewed by David Musgrove for the History Extra podcast, Everything you wanted to know … on British prisons.

For almost 90 minutes, Rosalind responded to questions on the history of prisons sent in by members of the public, as well as those questions which are most frequently typed into internet search engines.

To listen to the podcast, follow this link.

To accompany the programme, Rosalind also constructed a timeline of key events in the history of the prison in Britain. You can find it here.

Even 90 minutes is far too short to cover everything. There were some questions which we ran out of time to address. Also, we are aware that far too little was said about the history of prisons in Scotland, which has always been a separate jurisdiction. We hope to rectify this in due course, by offering further resources on the Prison History website.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the podcast!