David Scott

Dr David Gordon Scott (@dgscott2) has worked at The Open University since August 2016. He studied social sciences and criminology at Lancaster University between 1991-1996 where he gained an MA (with distinction) and was awarded a doctorate in 2006 under the supervision of Barbara Hudson by the University of Central Lancashire. He has taught criminology to undergraduate and postgraduate students at a number of institutions since 1994 including Edge Hill University, the University of Northumbria at Newcastle, the University of Central Lancashire and Liverpool John Moores University. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto.

David was the coordinator of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control from 2009-2012. He is co-founder and co-director of the independent publisher EG Press, which has published a number of texts on penal abolitionism. He is also a member of the European abolitionist activist collective No Prison, whose manifesto is published by EG Press in June 2018. David is a former editor of the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice and co-founding editor of the journal Justice, Power and Resistance. He was a founding member of the UK abolitionist penal pressure groups No More Prison and the Reclaim Justice Network. David is one of the main organisers of the campaign against the building of six new mega prisons in England and Wales and co-convener of the International Conference on Penal Abolition [ICOPA], June 2018. He is a trustee of JENGBA (Joint Enterprise Not Guilty By Association) and a member of the academic advisory group for INQUEST.

David has spoken and written widely about penal abolition in the media (including contributions to national UK newspapers, television and radio) and features in the abolitionist documentaries "Punishment: A Failed Social Experiment" (2012) and "Injustice: Crime, Prisons and Us" (2017). His research on prison abolition has been cited in the UK House of Parliament (see Hansard, 25th January 2017) and in the United Nations by the Special Rapporteur for Health (see UN Human Rights Committee, June 2018). In November 2017 he spoke at the House of Commons on prison abolition and children in custody.

David's main research interests are socialist ethics, state harm and the sociology and philosophy of punishment and he has published more than one hundred book chapters or journal articles. His books include:

Heavenly Confinement? (1996),

Expanding the Criminological Imagination (2007, with Barton, A., Corteen, K. and Whyte, D.),

Penology (2008),

Ghosts Beyond Our Realm (2009),

Controversial Issues In Prisons (2010, with Codd, H.),

Why Prison? (2013),

Critique and Dissent (2013, with Gilmore, J. and Moore, JM),

Prisons and Punishment (2014, with Flynn, N),

Beyond Criminal Justice (2014, with Moore, JM),

Emancipatory Politics and Praxis (2016)

Against Imprisonment (2018).

For Abolition: Essays on Prisons and Socialist Ethics (2020)

The Routledge International Handbook of Penal Abolition (2020, with Coyle, M.)

Demystifying Power, Crime, and Social Harm (2023, with Sim, J.)

Abolitionist Voices (2024)

Envisioning Abolition (2025, with Bell, E.)

His full CV is available here: https://dscott.academia.edu/cv

See also his short BBC animation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/viewpoint-what-would-a-world-without-prisons-be-li/p08nbj02