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On 2 November 2023 Dr Rory Kelly presented a paper on Prison Labour to colleagues at the Staff Research Seminar Series. Professor Dirk van Zyl Smit Acted as a respondent. Professor Van Zyl Smit is Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Senior Research Scholar, University of Cape Town and Emeritus Professor of Comparative and International Penal Law, University of Nottingham.

The presentation queried whether prison labour ought to be considered part of an offender's punishment. At present in England and Wales prison labour is not so classed. The sentence is the years to be served in prison and on licence in the community. The argument for reclassification drew on comparison to general features of punishment and to the role of labour in other sentences - the community order and suspended sentences. The paper also engaged with the difficulties that would follow from reclassification. Would proportionality dictate that sentences of imprisonment should be reduced and, if so, by how much? The paper finished by engaging with the alternative: that prison labour could be reformed to make it non-punitive through giving the offender a choice of whether to work and wider labour protections. The paper concluded prison labour is lost when classed as neither punishment nor as employment.