Over the past decades prison research in Europe has been led and shaped by women scholars. Sonja Snacken and Kristel Beyens in Belgium, Pat Carlen and Allison Liebling in the UK, and Laura Piacentini on Russian prisons, all share a deeply humanistic approach to their subject and subjects. They did not stop at walls and gates, but all directly ventured into the belly of the beast ‘prison’ and crossed the boundaries into a (mostly) male world of prison officers and prisoners, where women were a rare sight. Like their predecessor and also pioneer Elizabeth Fry in 19th century Britain, they brought back from their involvement a new and innovative understanding of the institution and its inhabitants, as well as engagement with reform and political and public debate. Their research and scholarship transcended the compassion of 19th century prison reformers like Elizabeth Fry. What they showed us was a microcosm with porous walls to society outside, however, a microcosm in which inequality, power and tensions were condensed and focused. Foremost, they offered profound insights into prisons as moral microcosm where morality and moral values are engrained in the everyday performance of this institution and are perhaps laid bare and visible more than in life outside.