On Tuesday 25 November 2025 at Edinburgh University’s Law School, Sara Snell, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland was our Drummond Hunter Lecture’s keynote speaker.

Her presentation considered how we might work together towards a more humane prison estate and focused on four key areas: decency; the importance of evidence; lived experience; and the role of prison inspections.

She posed a number of important questions and concluded with asking us to consider how prison inspections should minimise harm and querying whether prison conditions can ever resemble normal life outside of the prison.

Her presentation is available here.