Alison Liebling reflects on how the quality of prison life can be ‘seen‘ and how it changes over time.

Alison Liebling, is a British criminologist and academic. She has been Director of the Prisons Research Centre at the University of Cambridge since 2000, and Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice since 2006.

In 2016, Liebling was awarded the Perrie Award.  In July 2018, she was elected Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. 

She has written two books: Suicide in prisons and Prisons and their moral performance,  as well as many other texts.   Her work has been tremendously influential for a generation of criminologists and for the English and Welsh prison service.