When the Thamesmead estate was built in the late-1960s, it was hailed as a futuristic “town for the 21st century”. Designed to ease London’s post-war housing crisis, the Brutalist estate ...

All prisoners meet with a psychologist or a psychiatrist when they arrive at the prison, which is near Thamesmead. They can be allocated a normal cell with some home comforts, like a TV and kettle.

‘Thamesmead’. Semantically, the word sounds like a riverside Shakespearean ale house. But, in the public imagination, it conjures images of a 1970s, crime-ridden neighbourhood, and the droogish ...