


Should Prisons be beautiful?
Yvonne Jewkes & Andy West
Wed 19 March, 2025 at 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm GMT
Curious Minds Festival
- This event has passed.
Have you ever wondered what prisons are really like? Are they ‘holiday camps’ as the popular media would have us believe? Should they look and feel like places of punishment to deter people from committing crimes? Or could beautiful architecture and sensorily pleasing aesthetics inspire convicted offenders to lead better lives?
Join criminology professor and prison designer, Yvonne Jewkes (An Architecture of Hope: Reimagining the Prison, Restoring a House, ReBuilding Myself), and prison teacher and philosopher Andy West (The Life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Learning to be Free) for thought-provoking discussion about the architecture of incarceration.
Together they will explore the philosophical and practical implications of ‘beautiful’ prisons to help us find out what we truly believe about the nature and purpose of punishment. This event will encourage conversation, give space for emergent ideas, and bring ideas together to create a collective vision to the provocation that prisons should be beautiful.
Part of the Curious Minds festival – go to Book Tickets to be taken to the Bath Box Office website (concessionary rate available to BRLSI members).


