David Gordon Scott works at The Open University, UK. His previous books include Why Prison? (Cambridge University Press), Against Imprisonment (Waterside Press), For Abolition (Waterside Press) and The Routledge International Handbook of Penal Abolition (Routledge, co-edited with Michael Coyle). David is co-founding editor (with Emma Bell) of the international journal Justice, Power and Resistance. A former coordinator of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control (2009-2012), he is Chair of the Weavers' Uprising Bicentennial Committee. 

Joe Sim is Emeritus Professor of Criminology at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. His previous books include Medical Power in Prisons (Open University Press), Punishment and Prisons (Sage), British Prisons (Basil Blackwell, with Mike Fitzgerald) and Prisons Under Protest (Open University Press, with Phil Scraton and Paula Skidmore). He has also co-edited Western European Penal Systems (Sage, with Vincenzo Ruggiero and Mick Ryan) and State Power Crime (Sage, with Roy Coleman, Steve Tombs and David Whyte). He is a Trustee of the charity INQUEST.