Prison Service Journal - Centre for Crime and Justice Studies · A Convict Perspective Dr Andy...

This edition includes:

Perrie Lectures 2013:

Lesson for the Prison Service fromthe Mid-Staffs Inquiry

Nick Hardwick

Contraction in an Age of Expansion:an Operational Perspective

Ian Mulholland

A Convict PerspectiveDr Andy Aresti

Does Prison Size Matter? Jason Warr

Prison Contraction in an Age ofExpansion: Size Matters, but does ‘New’ equal ‘Better’

in Prison Design?Yvonne Jewkes

Interview with The Venerable William Noblett CBEMartin Kettle

P R I S O N S E R V I C E

OURNALJP R I S O N S E R V I C EP R I S O N S E R V I C E

OOUURRNNALALJJJanuary 2014 No 211

Perrie Lectures 2013

Contraction in an ageof expansion

Prison Service JournalIssue 211Issue 211Prison Service Journal

Purpose and editorial arrangements

The Prison Service Journal is a peer reviewed journal published by HM Prison Service of England and Wales.

Its purpose is to promote discussion on issues related to the work of the Prison Service, the wider criminal justice

system and associated fields. It aims to present reliable information and a range of views about these issues.

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cles are published and their precise length and language.

From May 2011 each edition is available electronically from the website of the Centre for Crimeand Justice Studies. This is available at http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/psj.html

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Six editions of the Journal, printed at HMP Leyhill, are published each year with a circulation of approximately

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Contents

Editorial Comment2

14

19

25

Perrie Lectures 2013Contraction in an Age of Expansion:an Operational PerspectiveIan Mulholland

Ian Mulholland is Deputy Director ofPublic Sector Prisons.

Perrie Lectures 2013Lesson for the Prison Service from the Mid-StaffsInquiryNick Hardwick

3Nick Hardwick is HM Chief Inspectorof Prisons.

Dr Andy Aresti is a lecturer atUniversity of Westminster. He is aformer prisoner.

Perrie Lectures 2013Does Prison Size Matter? Jason Warr

Jason Warr is Programme Managerand Research Co-ordinator at UserVoice and a PhD candidate at theUniversity of Cambridge. He wasformerly a prisoner.

Yvonne Jewkes is Professor ofCriminology at the University ofLeicester.

Perrie Lectures 2013A Convict PerspectiveDr Andy Aresti

31 Perrie Lectures 2013Prison Contraction in an Age of Expansion:Size Matters, but does ‘New’ equal ‘Better’in Prison Design?Yvonne Jewkes

Paul AddicottHMP PentonvilleDr Rachel Bell

HM & YOI HollowayMaggie Bolger

Prison Service College, Newbold RevelDr Alyson BrownEdge Hill UniversityDr Ben Crewe

University of CambridgePaul Crossey

National Operational ServicesEileen Fennerty-Lyons

North West Regional OfficeDr Michael Fiddler

University of GreenwichSteve HallSERCO

Dr Karen HarrisonUniversity of Hull

Professor Yvonne JewkesUniversity of LeicesterDr Helen JohnstonUniversity of HullMartin Kettle

Church of EnglandDr Victoria Knight

De Montford UniversityMonica Lloyd

University of BirminghamAlan Longwell

Northern Ireland Prison Service

William PayneBusiness Development Unit

Dr David ScottUniversity of Central Lancashire

Dr Basia SpalekUniversity of BirminghamChristopher Stacey

UnlockRay Taylor

HMP PentonvilleDr Azrini Wahidin

Queens University, BelfastMike Wheatley

Directorate of CommissioningKim Workman

Rethinking Crime and Punishment, NZRay Hazzard and Steve Williams

HMP Leyhill

Editorial BoardDr Jamie Bennett (Editor)

Governor HMP Grendon & Springhill

Dr Linda Kjaer Minke, AssistantProfessor at University of SouthernDenmark, Institute of Law.

37 A Study of Prisonization among Danish PrisonersDr Linda Kjaer Minke

The Editorial Board wishes to make clear that the views expressed by contributors are their own and donot necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the Prison Service.Printed at HMP Leyhill on 115 gsm Satimat 15% Recycled SilkSet in 10 on 13 pt Frutiger LightCirculation approx 6,000ISSN 0300-3558 Crown Copyright 2014

January 2014

1Issue 211 Prison Service Journal

50 Dr Jamie Bennett is Governor ofHMP Grendon and Springhill.

Book ReviewCrime and the EconomyDr Jamie Bennett

51 Book ReviewThe Evidence Enigma: Correctional Boot Campsand Other Failures in Evidence-Based PolicymakingDr Rachel Campbell-Colquhoun

Dr Rachel Campbell-ColquhounHM and YOI Holloway.

54

Cover photograph by Brian Locklin,Health Care Officer, HMP Gartree.

Book ReviewWomen, Punishment and Social Justice. HumanRights and Penal PracticesBev Orton

52

Bev Orton is a Fellow in theCriminology Department at theUniversity of Hull.

Book ReviewKey Concepts in Youth StudiesDr Daniel Marshall

52

Dr Daniel Marshall, Monitoring andEvaluation Officer, Catch22 NCAS.Visiting Scholar, Institute ofCriminology, University of Cambridge,UK.

Book ReviewLife Imprisonment: An Unofficial GuidePaul Crossey

Dr Paul Taylor is Lecturer inCriminology at University of Chester.Siân Williams is a RegisteredMental Health Nurse, Nurse Specialist,working in the Crisis Resolution Teamat Cheshire and Wirral PartnershipNHS Foundation Trust.

43 Sentencing Reform and Prisoner Mental HealthDr Paul Taylor and Siân Williams

Paul Crossey is an Operational PrisonManager seconded to NOMSHeadquarters.

56 Interview: The Venerable William Noblett CBEMartin Kettle

The Venerable William Noblett CBEwas Chaplain General of HM PrisonService between 2001 and 2011.He is interviewed by Martin Kettlewho is a former prison managercurrently Home Affairs Policy Advisorto the Church of England.

Editorial Comment

Issue 2112 Prison Service Journal

Prison Service Journal has a long-standing partnershipwith the Perrie Lectures. Each year, articles are publishedbased upon the annual lectures. This is a partnership ofwhich the Prison Service Journal is proud.

The Perrie Lectures is an annual event which has thepurpose of stimulating dialogue between criminal justiceorganisations, the voluntary sector and all those with anacademic, legal or practical interest in offenders and theirfamilies. It is hoped that the event will contribute towardsimproving the care of offenders, and advancing penalpolicy, in its broadest sense. The Lectures are named inhonour of Bill Perrie, who retired from the Prison Service in1978. He worked as a prison governor for 32 years, latterlyat HMPs Hull, Long Lartin, and Birmingham. He was notedfor his contribution to the development of hostels, workingout schemes, and regimes for long term prisoners.

The 2013 Lectures took the title of ‘Contraction in anage of expansion’. As the speakers illustrate, this questionmay be approached from a number of differentperspectives. In particular, it may be asked what isexpanding and what is contracting? It may be argued thatthe prison population is expanding and remains at ahistorically high level, albeit that it has ameliorated to alimited degree in recent months. It may be argued that it isthe size of prisons that are expanding, with larger prisonssuch as HMP Oakwood, replacing smaller sometimeshistorically significant prisons. It may be competition whichis expanding, with greater opportunities for commercialorganisations to play a role in the delivery of prison services.Another perspective is the expansion of the carceral state,with the growth in immigration detention, the use of newtechnologies such as electronic monitoring, the increase ineveryday security such as CCTV, gated communities andprivate security personnel. In contrast contraction may referto the reduced resources available to public servicesfollowing the financial crisis of 2008, the subsequentrecession and the emergence of the ‘age of austerity’. Thismay also refer to a more qualitative and moral judgmentabout prisons — whether there has been a contraction inthe quality of care and the humanity of prison life.

The various speakers approach the issues from theirown unique and distinct perspectives. Nick Hardwick, ChiefInspector of Prisons in England and Wales, directlyconsiders the quality of the services provided to prisoners.He draws lessons from the report into the failures at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust where ‘patients wereroutinely neglected by a Trust that was preoccupied withcost cutting, targets and processes and which lost sight ofits fundamental responsibility to provide safe care’.Through careful analysis of the findings of the report,

Hardwick, argues that lessons can be drawn that can beapplied to prisons in order to ensure that outcomes fromprisoners are protected in an environment characterised byfluidity, risk and uncertainty. Ian Mulholland, DeputyDirector of Public Sector Prisons, considers theBenchmarking programme, aimed at providing astructured approach to distributing reduced resourcesamongst prisons. He argues that this programme is beingtaken forward in order to respond to the challengingeconomic environment in a way that is systematic, sensitiveto local pressures and attuned to the operational risks.

The third lecture comes from Andy Aresti, anacademic who formerly served a prison sentence and is afounding member of the British Convict Criminologymovement. He adopts a critical perspective, arguing thatchanges to prisons over recent decades have been drivenby commercial imperatives and economic rationality. Theconsequences of this, he suggests, is the loss of a humanquality in the prison and post-prison world that makes itdifficult for those who have experienced prison tonegotiate and sustain new identities that help them desistfrom crime.

The final two lectures explore the issues of prisonarchitecture, design and size. Jason Warr, of User Voice andhimself a former prisoner, offers a polemic critique of largerprisons. In particular he argues that larger prisons arecharacterised by more distant social relations that bring outthe worst in prisons, prisoners and prison staff. YvonneJewkes, Professor of Criminology at the University ofLeicester, discusses prison architecture drawing uponrecent prison construction in England and Wales, andNorway. Through these examples, she illuminates howprison architecture reflects and realises in practice the widersocial culture and values regarding imprisonment and theimprisoned.

The edition also features an interview with TheVenerable William Noblett, the recipient of the PerrieAward. This award has been presented annually since 1995to the person the Perrie Lectures Committee consider tohave done most to promote an understanding of the workof the Prison Service and pushed forward the developmentof penal policy. William Nobelett was recognized for hiswork leading the Prison Service Chaplaincy at a time ofsignificant change when religion has been a prominent andsometimes controversial issue in prisons.

The Prison Service Journal is proud to publish thesearticles and to continue the partnership with the PerrieLectures. The 2013 Lectures provide a vibrant, diverse andilluminating perspective on the critical issues facing thosewho live and work in prisons today.

Prison Service Journal

Contraction in an age of expansion is an intriguingtheme: what exactly has been contracting andwhat expanding? Essentially, it seems to me, itboils down to prisons being expected to do morewith less.

Prisons are pretty risky organisations, in fact, youmight say that their business is to manage risk onbehalf of society. So, I don’t think it is very contentiousto say that if we are asking organisations that alreadymanage significant risk, to do more with less, it wouldbe only sensible to monitor very carefully whether aconsequence of that, is the level of risk increasing tounacceptable levels. But how to do that? No doubtindividual prisons, NOMS, the Ministry of Justice, allhave sophisticated systems in place to monitor andmanage risk, but I want to look at it through a differentprism.

I was at an inspiring lecture recently by RobertFrancis QC, who conducted the inquiry into the careprovided by Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust —‘The Mid Staffs Inquiry’.1 Mid Staffs failed withshocking, distressing consequences for patients andtheir families — and this was despite the verysophisticated systems the NHS has in place to managerisk. I want to consider what lessons the Mid StaffsInquiry has for a prison service being asked to do morewith less. I don’t want to make simplistic comparisons— but we would want to be confident, would be not,that there is not a Her Majesty’s Prison Mid-Staffordshire out there somewhere?

I should insert a disclaimer here. This is myinterpretation of how what Robert Francis said appliesto prisons. If you want to know what he thinks, readthe report. Indeed, I urge you to do that.

The press statement with which Robert Francesintroduced his report begins like this.

The final report into the care provided by MidStaffordshire NHS Foundation Trust waspublished today. The Inquiry Chairman, Robert

Francis QC, concluded that patients wereroutinely neglected by a Trust that waspreoccupied with cost cutting, targets andprocesses and which lost sight of itsfundamental responsibility to provide safecare.2

What allowed that to happen? When I heardRobert Francis speak, he opened his remarks with thisquote from Florence Nightingale:

‘What can’t be cured must be endured’ is thevery worst and most dangerous maxim for anurse which ever was made. Patience andresignation in her are but other words forcarelessness and indifference —contemptible, if in regard to herself; culpable;if in regard to her sick.3

Swap ‘patients’ for ‘prisoners’, ‘the prison’ for the‘the trust, ‘prison governors and officers’ for ‘nurses’and does not that send a spasm of recognition throughyou?

Don’t respond to this with a shrug that a prison’sresponsibilities to prisoners are so different from thoseof a hospital to its patients that somehow it does notapply. Take from it that if this can happen in a hospitalwhere the responsibility to provide care isunambiguous, how much more carefully do we have toguard against it in a prison. Now, to be absolutely clear,I am not saying the conditions that existed in Mid Staffsexist in any prison I know. What I am saying is that it isa risk we should guard against and I think there is someevidence that it is a growing risk.

This is a summary of our inspection findings for2012/13. It shows the rolling annual average of ourhealthy prison assessments as the year progresses. Itshows a decline for the outcomes for prisoners wehave reported in almost all areas over the year.4

(Figure 1)

Issue 211 3

1. Francis, R. (2013) Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry London: the Stationary Office available athttp://www. midstaffspublicinquiry.com/report

2. Robert Francis QC. Press release: Final Report Of The Independent Inquiry Into Care Provided By Mid Staffordshire NHS FoundationTrust.

3. Robert Francis QC. King’s Fund Conference 27 February 2013 Lessons from Stafford quotes: @Florence Nightingale; Notes on Nursing1860 Pages 92-93’.

4. HMI Prisons. Rolling average of reported inspection outcomes 2012/13.


Lesson for the Prison Service from theMid-Staffs InquiryNick Hardwick is HM Chief Inspector of Prisons.


There might be a number of reasons for this to dowith our methodology, or the inspection process itself.Perhaps our judgements are getting harsher. Perhaps ourrisk assessment processes are getting better so we areinspecting the most problematic places more regularly.No doubt, lots of people will want to explain it in thoseterms. But hold this thought. Perhaps the reason for thisdecline in outcomes we recorded in our inspections lastyear is the most obvious one — things really are gettingworse.

The role of HM Inspectorate of Prisons

I should briefly explain how the inspectorate workfor those who have not had the joys of an inspection.This will help to explain how we obtain the evidence I willuse in this article, and secondly, it is important toacknowledge that some of the lessons arising from theMid Staffs Inquiry were about the failures of theregulators and inspectors.

The modern form of independent prisoninspection, it should be remembered, grew out of theresponse to the prison riots and industrial relationstensions of the 1970s.5 The Strangeways riot in 1990led to the creation of the Prison and ProbationOmbudsman and Independent Monitoring Boards intheir current form.6 When the prison system failed,effective inspection, monitoring and complaintssystems were seen as an important part of the remedy.The statutory function of the prison inspectorate is toreport on ‘the treatment of prisoners and the conditionsin prisons’. That means we report on outcomes forprisoners, not the management of prisons. Thatresponsibility now extends beyond prisons to YoungOffender Institutions, immigration detention, policeand courts custody.

In all those areas we assess prisons against the fourhealthy prison tests below:Safety prisoners, even the most vulnerable,

are held safelyRespect prisoners are treated with respect for

their human dignityPurposeful prisoners are able, and expected, toactivity engage in activity that is likely to

benefit themResettlement prisoners are prepared for their release

into the community and helped toreduce the likelihood of re-offending.7

In each area we make an assessment of whetheroutcomes for prisoners are good, reasonably good, notsufficiently good or poor. To analyse and compare theseassessments we give them a numerical value — ‘Good’ is4, ‘Poor’ is 1 etc. Each healthy prison test is underpinnedby a set of Expectations or inspection standards that weinspect against and each Expectation has a set ofindicators that set out the evidence we will look for toprovide assurance the Expectation has been met. TheseExpectations are referenced against human rightsstandards and norms. An important part of how weoperate is that we are not auditors checking that prisonservice policy and procedures are being followed, we areinspecting outcomes against objective, externalstandards. We carry out about 100 inspections a yearand almost all now are unannounced.

When we inspect we come to our judgements onthe basis of five main sources of evidence: Prisoners surveys

Discussion with prisoners individually and in groups

Talking to governors, staff and visitors to the prison

Examining documents and records and

Observation

4 Issue 211

5. The Home Office; Prisons over Two Centuries extracted from the Home Office 1782 to 1982.6. The Woolf Report 1991; quoted in Doing Time or using Time: HM Chief Inspector of Prisons January 1993.7. HMI Prisons: Prison Expectations: Healthy prison tests.

Figure 1: HMI Prisons Healthy Prison Assessments - Rolling Annual Averages


Our role was strengthened when the UK became asignatory to the Optional Protocol to the ConventionAgainst Torture and other cruel, inhuman and degradingtreatment or punishment — or OPCAT as its known.OPCAT requires signatory states to establish a system ofindependent, preventative inspection of all places ofdetention known as the National PreventativeMechanism or NPM, and the prisons inspectorate is oneof the bodies that make up the UK NPM. OPCAT specifiesthe characteristics an NPM must have: It must be independent

Adequately resourced

Have access to all places of detention and detaineesand to all information

Be able to conduct interviews with detainees andstaff in private

Make regular visits

And be able to make recommendations andcomment on legislative proposals.8

I think those who designed OPCAT had two greatinsights. The central features of the system are first, thatit recognises inspection as a preventative system. Theprimary purpose is not to catch establishments out doingwrong or detect human rights abuses — but to preventthings going wrong in the first place and prevent thosehuman rights abuses from occurring. Second, itrecognises that for the inspection function to beeffective, it needs to be independent, and ourindependence is central to how we work. Sometimes,that independence means we have unwelcome or

difficult things to say and OPCAT provides an importsafeguard for our ability to do so.

Much of what I have to say in this article is basedupon that inspection evidence — I will focus on theevidence of our inspections of adult male prisons — notbecause other types of custody are not important butbecause they are a topic in their own right.

As part of looking at the lessons of the Mid-Staffsenquiry, I will consider the role of inspection, monitoringand complaints bodies in identifying and managing riskin a system under pressure.

What is contracting and what expanding?

We are all familiar with the idea that the prisonpopulation has grown enormously over the last fewdecades. In June 1993 the prison population stood at44,246. It peaked in December 2011 at 88,179.9 (Figures2 and 3). However, since then it has fallen and stood at83,897 at the end of Mat 2013. A fall of almost 5 percent.10 So we need to qualify our idea of a continuallyexpanding prison population. It would be right to becautious about putting too much reliance on the mostrecent figures but it is fair to say that NOMS’ ownprojections predict a continuing downward trend.

Prison numbers cannot be looked at in isolation. Weneed to consider them against overall prison capacity andwhether the type of prison we have is fit for purpose. InDecember 2011 the capacity of the prison estate was78,471 but it had to hold that record number of 88,179prisoners. It was operating at 12.4 per cent over capacity.

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8. Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.9. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130315183909/http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/statistics/mojstats/story-prison-

population.csv10. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prison-population-2012

Figure 2: Total Prison Population 1993 - 2011 by year

Prison Service Journal6 Issue 211

At the end of May 2013, the capacity had fallen to78,347 and prison, and the system held 83,897 prisoners— 7.1 per cent over capacity. Still too high, but lessovercrowded than before.11 (Figure 4)

In January this year, the government announced theclosure of 7 prisons and plans to increase the size ofothers and build one large ‘titan prison’. The prisonsannounced for closure were Bullwood Hall, Camp Hill,Canterbury, Gloucester, Kingston, Shrewsbury, SheptonMallet.12

Most of these prisons were smaller than the averageprison size and some with specialist functions, such asShepton Mallet and Kingston, which were amongst thebest we inspect. But others, like Gloucester, Camp Hilland Canterbury, whilst still small were amongst thoseabout which we had significant concerns, at least inrelation to some of their functions.13 (Figure 5)

There is an argument that larger prisons not onlyprovide economies of scale but can also provide a greaterrange of opportunities than smaller prisons. Announcingplans to build a titan prison, Chris Grayling, the JusticeSecretary said:

If you’ve got a big centre like that you’ve gotthe ability to put good training facilities at theheart of it because it’s in all of our interests tomake sure that people come out of prisonwith more education, more skills and theyhave a better chance of getting a job ratherthan going back to prison.14

I looked at how we had assessed the ten largestprisons at their most recent inspection.15 They do notinclude the very large new Oakwood prison which we

11. http://d19ylpo4aovc7m.cloudfront.net/fileadmin/howard_league/user/pdf/Prison_watch/Prison_Watch_21.06.2013.pdf12 Ministry of Justice: Press release 10 January 2013: Changes to prison capacity announced.13. HMI Prisons: Inspection reports.14. Rt Hon Chris Grayling MP, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, quoted by the BBC 10 January 2013.15. HMI Prisons: Inspection reports.

Figure 3: Total prison population May 2012 - May 2013

Figure 4: Overcrowding % 2 years to May 2013


have not inspected yet. The results were mixed but it isnoteworthy than none of them were good or reasonablygood in all the healthy prison tests and they tended toscore worst against our purposeful activity test. Theremight be a number of reasons for that — these are mainlyovercrowded local prisons and a large training prisonoperating at the correct capacity might do better — but Ithink the onus is on those who propose such a model isto evidence that it will and I do not think they have doneso yet. (Figure 6)

For a more systematic view about the relationshipbetween prison size and prison outcomes, I turned tosome work done by one of our excellent researchers, SamBooth, in 2009 at the time the Labour government wasitself planning for the introduction of titan prisons.16 Herwork looked at the characteristics of a prison that was

performing ‘well’ — pretty much equivalent to the ‘good’outcomes we use today. Her very thorough andsystematic analysis found than prisons with a populationof less than 400 were four times more likely to beperforming well than a prison with a population of over800. Other factors were important too — older prisonsopened before 1938 for instance were 47 per cent lesslikely to be performing well than a prison opened from1978 onwards.

None of this is too surprising. If you pull this togetherwhat is says, is that size is not an exact predictor ofperformance but on the whole, the analysis bears outwhat common sense would suggest — that as the size ofprisons increase, they will be more difficult to run.

Running larger establishments is not the onlychallenge governors have. They are increasingly

Issue 211 7

16. HMI Prisons: The prison characteristics that predict prisons being assessed as performing ‘well’; a thematic review by HM ChiefInspector of Prisons. Samantha Booth 2009.

Establishment Inspection Population Safety Respect Purposeful Resettlement date score score activity score

score

Bullwood Hall 03/09/2012 209 4 3 4 2

Camp Hill 21/05/2012 580 2 3 1 2

Canterbury 16/07/2012 299 4 3 4 1

Gloucester 03/07/2012 309 3 2 1 2

Kingston 16/08/2010 195 4 4 3 4

Shepton Mallet 14/06/2010 189 4 4 3 4

Shrewsbury 05/09/2011 333 4 4 3 2

HEALTHY PRISON ASSESSMENT SCORES

Establishment In-use Population % Safety Respect Purposeful Resettle-CNA Over- activity ment

crowded

Birmingham 1,093 1,413 129% 3 3 2 2

Elmley 943 1,243 132% 3 3 2 3

Forest Bank 1,064 1,316 124% 3 3 2 4

Hewell 1,003 1,203 120% 2 1 2 3

Highpoint 1,259 1,244 99% 3 3 3 2

Northumberland 1,354 1,316 97% 3 3 2 2

Parc 1,170 1,435 123% 3 2 2 4

Pentonville 915 1,262 138% 2 3 2 2

Wandsworth 730 1,218 167% 1 1 2 3

Wormwood 1,170 1,240 106% 3 3 2 3Scrubs

Figure 5: Closed prisons — last HPA scores

Figure 6: Largest prison HPA scores


commissioners or contract managers, with many of thefunctions provided by their prison — healthcare, learning,skills and work, resettlement provision and an increasingproportion of support and ancillary functions — providedby contracted providers. As we see sometimes inhealthcare or learning and skills for instance, the controlthe governor has over that provision is tenuous and whenthings go wrong, the governor’s ability to take correctiveaction is very constrained.

I will give an example from our inspection of HMPRanby last year.17 I quote from the introduction to thereport:

Poor prescribing practice wasone element of very poorhealth care commissioned byNHS South Yorkshire andBassetlaw.

The prison had tried toaddress this prior to theinspection but withoutsuccess.

The care provided byindividual medical staff wasgood.

There were a high number ofmissed appointments butlong waiting lists for anappointment.

There was no out of hoursservice and unqualified prisonstaff had to judge whether aprisoner who complained of being unwell atnight should be taken out of the prison tohospital with all the disruption that entailed, ortold to wait until the next morning when anurse or doctor would be available to see him.In our view, this seriously compromised prisonersafety.

At the heart of these issues were poorpartnership arrangements and the partnershipboard, which should have provided a forum forsorting them out, had not met for more than sixmonths.

What happened was the governor was at his witsend. Commissioners and providers showed very little

knowledge or interest in what was required in the prisonwith consequences not just for the health of prisoners butalso for the wider security of the prison. In my view, thegovernor had done everything possible he could toresolve the situation.

Despite these challenges, the expectations thatprisons should deliver more are growing too. I very muchwelcome the government’s intention to transformrehabilitation services and provide greater support to themany prisoners serving short sentences who now receivevery little support at all.18 Some aspects of the proposedmechanisms for delivering this require further thought —

but who can argue with theintention?

It is a fact, however, that theprisons that will bear the greatestresponsibility for delivering this aremany of the large, overcrowdedVictorian prisons with huge churnamongst their populations andthat are amongst the most difficultto run. These are the prisons toowhich will have to deliver changesto the Incentives and EarnedPrivileges scheme19 which willparticularly affect prisoners whenthey begin their sentence — andno doubt they are looking forwardto implementing the smoking banwhen that comes into force nextyear I believe.20

So even if the prisonpopulation itself seems to have atleast stabilised for the moment,what is certainly expanding are the

expectations on prisons and those who work in them —to deliver better outcomes from larger, more complexestablishments.

And what is contracting? The resources they have todo it with. The National Audit Office reported in 2012that NOMS as a whole (that is prison, probation and HQfunctions) had to save £884M from their 2010 baseline,37 per cent of which had to come from HQ.21 Much ofthat saving has come from staff. ‘Fair and Sustainable’and the benchmarking exercise have significantly reducedthe number of officers supervising prisoners and thenumber of governors and managers supervising officersand staff and the support they all get from HQ.

When the Public Accounts Committee consideredthe NAO report, the committee recognised NOMS’success in meeting its financial targets despite the

8 Issue 211

17. HMI Prisons: Report on an announced inspection of HMP Ranby (5-9 March 2012) by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. 18. Ministry of Justice: Transforming rehabilitation; A strategy for reform 3 May 2013.19. Ministry of Justice: Press release 30 April 2013: Toughening up prisoner privileges.20. See for example Mail on Sunday 3 March 2013.21. National Audit Office 18 September 2012: Restructuring of the National Offender Management Service.

Commissioners andproviders showedvery little knowledgeor interest in whatwas required in the

prison withconsequences notjust for the health ofprisoners but also forthe wider security of

the prison.


challenges it faced but the Chairman, The Rt HonMargaret Hodge MP said:

Unless overcrowding is addressed and staffcontinue to carry out offender managementwork, it is increasingly likely that rehabilitationwork needed to reduce the risk of prisonersreoffending will not be provided and thatprisoners will not be ready for transfer to openconditions or release.

We were not reassured that the Agency hasdone enough to address therisks to safety, decency andstandards in prisons and incommunity services arisingfrom staffing cutsimplemented to meetfinancial targets.22

My point here is not that Ithink efficiencies can’t andshouldn’t be made — I do — andwe have certainly seenestablishments improve despitethe savings they are required tomake. Nor am I opposed to manyof the government’s policy ideas— in particular I welcome theemphasis on rehabilitation. Mypoint is simply this. If you areasking a significant number ofinherently risky organisations to domore with less — it is just simplyprudent to consider that the levelof risk might increase and that needs to be monitored andmanaged carefully.

Learning from the Mid-Staffs Inquiry

Concerns about mortality and the standard of careprovided at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trustresulted in an investigation by the Healthcare Commission(HCC) which published a highly critical report in March2009. This was followed by two reviews commissioned bythe Department of Health. These investigations gave riseto widespread public concern and a loss of confidence inthe Trust, its services and management. Consequently, thethen Secretary of State for Health, Andy Burnham MP,asked Robert Francis to conduct an Inquiry into what hadgone wrong.

The formal text of the inquiry report hides the horrorof what actually happened. In his lecture, Robert Francis

quoted this account from the relative of a patient in thenotorious Ward 11.23

In the next room you could hear the buzzerssounding. After about 20 minutes you couldhear the men shouting for the nurse, ‘Nurse,nurse’, and it just went on and on.

And then very often it would be two peoplecalling at the same time and then you wouldhear them crying, like shouting ‘Nurse’ louder,and then you would hear them just crying,

just sobbing, they would justsob and you just presumedthat they had had to wet thebed.

And then after they wouldsob, they seemed to thenshout again for the nurse andthen it would go quiet ... 24

I suppose at least olderprisoners in a prison with nightsanitation have a pot — so that’sbetter isn’t it?

Here is another exampleFrancis quotes. The daughter-in-law of a 96 year old patient:

We got there about 10o’clock and I could not believemy eyes. The door was wideopen. There were peoplewalking past.

Mum was in bed with the cot sides up and shehadn’t got a stitch of clothing on. I mean, shewould have been horrified.

She was completely naked and if I said coveredin faeces, she was. It was everywhere.

It was in her hair, her eyes, her nails, her handsand on all the cot side, so she had obviouslybeen trying to lift her herself up or move about,because the bed was covered and it was literallyeverywhere and it was dried. It would havebeen there a long time, it wasn’t new.

To be fair, I don’t think I have ever seen anything likethat in a prison, but I have seen elderly, physically disabledand mentally ill prisoners in conditions — where they had

Issue 211 9

22. Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts 05 March 2013.23. Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust public Enquiry Volume 3, Paragraph 23.8.24. Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry Volume 3, Paragraph 23.9.

If you are asking asignificant numberof inherently riskyorganisations to domore with less — itis just simply prudentto consider that thelevel of risk mightincrease and thatneeds to bemonitored and

managed carefully.


been for long periods — which could only be described asdegrading.

So what were the warning signs in Mid-Staffordshirethat were missed that allowed that situation to develop?Francis sets out seven. First, patient stories of the sort Ihave just described. Too often these were not heard ordismissed in Mid Staffs hospital — and of course one ofthe significant risks in a prison is that if prisoners talkabout victimisation or neglect they can easily be dismissedas not credible. I think one of the things my predecessorsgot absolutely right at the inspectorate, and I have simplycontinued, is to put what prisoners tell us at the heart ofour inspection process. I remember asking one of ourinspectors who had been seconded from the prisonservice and was returning to her prison to work what shehad learnt from her time at the inspectorate. ‘To listen toprisoners’ she said. That’s a hard thing for those whowork in prisons when time is short and you are rushingfrom task to task but neglect it at your peril.

The second warning sign was mortality data. By this,Francis was referring to the statistics that suggestedpatient mortality was much higher than should have beenexpected, and the trust’s inadequate response to it. Thenumber of self-inflicted deaths in prison has thankfullycome down from the levels of a few years ago but it stillremains much too high. In my 2011/12 Annual Report Ireported:

The number of self-inflicted deaths in prisonrose from 54 (0.64 per 1,000 prisoners) in 2010—11 to 66 (0.76 per 1,000 prisoners) in 2011—12. Three children held in Young OffenderInstitutions killed themselves.

It remains to be seen whether this rise is ananomaly, or whether it heralds the reversal of adownward trend in the number of self-inflicteddeaths in prison.

Incidents of self-harm are, however, also risingin men’s prisons — from 14,768 in 2010–11 to16,146 in 2011–12 (the number fell in women’sprisons) — as are the number of recordedassaults, from 13,804 to 14,858.

Taken together, these figures are a matter ofreal concern.

When we compared survey results for prisonsinspected this year with those from theirprevious inspections, prisoners’ perceptions of

their safety had significantly worsened in twiceas many prisons as those where they hadsignificantly improved.25

The figures I quoted in my last annual report coverthe period April 2011 to March 2012. We can’t do anexact comparison for this year yet, because the NOMSsafety data figures are not available for the first quarter of2013. However, we can compare the figures for thecalendar year 2011 and the calendar year 2012. Theypaint a similar picture to those I reported in our last annualreport. The number of self-inflicted deaths rose from 57 in2011 to 60 in 2012. This represented a slight increase inthe number of self-inflicted deaths per 1000 from 0.66 to0.7.26 The incidence of self harm continued to rise in men’sprisons from 15,829 incidents in 2011 to 16,567 in 2012.The number of self-harm incidents in women’s prisonscontinued to fall although the rate per 1000 remainssignificantly higher than that in men’s prisons.27

The number of assaults of all types fell, I am pleasedto say. That may reflect the fall in the number of youngpeople in custody. The number of assaults involvingyoung people aged 15-20 fell sharply — while thoseinvolving older men aged 21 to 40 grew.28

And as we have seen, our inspection assessmentssuggest that levels of safety have fallen over the year butthe decline has not been as sharp as in some otherhealthy prison tests. In my view the evidence continues tosuggest at least a concern about declining safety levels.

The other broader point that Francis makes aboutthe mortality statistics at Mid Staffs is that there weresome valid methodological criticisms that could be madeof the way they were used but there was no doubt thatthe overall message they gave was substantially correct.The reaction of management to data that was givingthem unwelcome news was to try and find reasons whyit might not be true rather than to act on the basis itmight be, until proved otherwise.

The third missed warning sign he identifies werecomplaints. Complaints at Mid Staffs were often dealtwith by the unit to which the complaint referred,defensively, slowly and with very little remedial actiontaken. The Trust Board was not told the substance of anycomplaints. Taken together they should have been a loudand clear warning that something was wrong.Nevertheless, Francis cautions against too great a relianceon the complaints system. Some patients were unable tocomplain on their own behalf and had no friends orfamily visiting them who could take up a complaint forthem. In addition, patients and their families were oftenscared to make a complaint for fear of repercussions.

10 Issue 211

25. HMI Prisons Annual report 2011/12 Introduction.26. Ministry of Justice: Safety in Custody Statistics England and Wales Update to December 2012: Deaths.27. Ministry of Justice: Safety in Custody Statistics England and Wales Update to December 2012: Self-harm.28. Ministry of Justice: Safety in Custody Statistics England and Wales Update to December 2012: Assault in prison custody 2002-2012

Table 3.3 assaults by age.


So what about prison complaints? Do those of youwho work in prisons know the patterns and trends ofprisoner complaints in your prison? Are you confident thatthey are dealt with by staff who are not directly involved?Are complaints answered promptly, courteously andfollowed through and where necessary is remedial actiontaken?

Francis quotes one relative of a patient who told himthis:

Some of them were so stroppy that you felt thatif you did complain, that they could be spitefulto my Mum or they could ignore her a bitmore.29

I tell you, that is exactly what some prisoners’ familiestell me when they write to me with a concern about howthey or a relative in prison is being treated.

The government’s consultation paper on changes tothe legal aid system makes heavyreliance on the prisoner complaintssystem. I think they need to bemore cautious. In our response tothe consultation paper we pointout that our inspection evidencesuggests that the prisonercomplaints system cannot beconsistently relied on. In oursurveys last year, 13 per cent ofprisoners told us it was hard tomake a complaint, two thirds ofthose who did so felt it had not been sorted out fairly andnearly one in five told us they had been prevented frommaking a complaint.30 We find repeated examples of theperson about whom the complaint is made being thesame person who answers it.

Don’t underestimate the importance of this. Aneffective complaints system in which prisoners haveconfidence was seen as an essential part of the remedy tothe Strangeways riots by Lord Woolf’s report.31

The fourth missed warning sign was staff andwhistleblowers who did raise concerns but there was abullying and dismissive response when they did. Francisalso gives reasons why more staff did not raise concerns:Shame. Some staff felt personally ashamed of the poorcare they felt they were obliged to give.

Next, what Francis describes as ‘the sound of pain’.One staff member told him this:

The nurses were so under-resourced they wereworking extra hours, they were desperately

moving from place to place to try to giveadequate care to patients. If you are in thatenvironment for long enough, what happens isyou become immune to the sound of pain. Youeither become immune to the sound of pain oryou walk away. You cannot feel people’s pain,you cannot continue to want to do the best youpossibly can when the system says no to you,you can’t do the best you can.32

I was talking to a group of sessional staff who visitprisons regularly at an event last weekend and theydescribed exactly that. They felt overwhelmed by whatthey were dealing with and simply had to shut out all thedistress they were hearing or leave.

This is a quote from an inspection report aboutCookham Wood YOI in 2009.

The living units were very noisy, with cell bellsconstantly ringing and youngpeople shouting to each otherand staff when locked in theircells. The noise of cell bellswas exacerbated becausethey rang on both unitswhenever they wereactivated. Staff and youngpeople told us that cell bellswere used frequently byyoung people to gain staffattention for routine matters

and it seemed to have become an acceptedform of communication. Consequently, cell bellswere not responded to with any sense ofurgency and the risk of failure to respond to agenuine emergency was high. Observationpanels and windows on stairwells wereregularly broken and rubbish from cells emptiedinto the corridors.33

Cookham Wood, I should say, has improved beyondall recognition since we did that inspection but thatextract from the report captures how staff shut out whatthey heard and saw in the way Francis describes.

Then there is crude self-interest. Staff don’t raisethings because they perceive it will be damaging for themin some way or they simply want a quiet life.

The fifth missed opportunity to see the warning signsthat Francis says was missed was the governance of thetrust. There were some organisational failures which maybe specific to a health setting but Francis also describes a

Issue 211 11

29. Robert Francis QC. King’s Fund Conference 27 February 2013 Lessons from Stafford.30. Submission to Ministry of Justice: Transforming Legal Aid —delivering a more credible and efficient system. HM Chief Inspector of

Prison 4 June 2013. 31. HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Annual Report 1996–º1997.32. Robert Francis QC. King’s Fund Conference 27 February 2013 Lessons from Stafford.33. HMI Prisons: Report on an announced inspection of HMYOI Cookham Wood (2-9 February 2009) by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons.

Some staff feltpersonally ashamedof the poor care they

felt they wereobliged to give.


set of attitudes which meant that opportunities to see andact on warnings were missed. Those who work in prisonsmay recognise some of these: A mindset of uncritical scepticism by managers

about complaints and concerns?

The comfort of poor practice being common —‘we’re not the worst’?

An over-reliance on insufficiently rigorous externalinspection and scrutiny findings?

And finally Francis points to two other factors.Reductions in staffing and finance and the reorganisationrequired to achieve these without properly thinkingthrough their implications for patient care. Of course,Robert Francis does not argue that the NHS or Mid Staffshospital should be exempt from the financial constraintsthat all public organisations face. As I understand it, whathe argues is that insufficient weight was given to theimpact on patient care in considering the various options.Why then were these warning signs missed andopportunities to put things right ignored? Users were not heard The significance for users of concerns,

reorganisations, information was overlooked

The cumulative effect of concerns was notconsidered

Some key decision makers had insufficient supportand expertise

There was an assumption that ‘someone else wasdealing with it’

Safety relevant information was not shared — howoften do we see that in prisons?

There were barriers to information sharing.

All these factors came together to create a negativeculture which he describes like this:34

This is what he described as existing in Mid Staffshospital — I recognise it as a pretty good description ofthe common features of a failing prison. The failures werenot just internal to Mid Staffs Hospital. The externalregulatory and inspection mechanisms also failed. Hedescribed regulators and inspectors as concentrating onthe system’s business, not patients. He say regulators had standards which missed the

point

There was too great a focus on finance, corporategovernance and targets

There were regulatory gaps

Inspectors balanced ‘bad’ news with ‘good’regardless of the objective weight different findingsshould have. And the recipients of inspectionfindings naturally heard the good news better thanthe bad.

Inspectors assumed compliance rather than fearingnon compliance

And too often they accepted positive informationuncritically whilst rejecting the negative.

Conclusion

Let me say again why all this is relevant to the prisonservice. Contraction in an age of expansion meanscontacting resources whilst meeting expandingrequirements, in other words doing more for less.

In an organisation that has managing risk as a corefunction, it must increase the level of risk that has to bemanaged. I am not predicting murder and mayhem, butwhat I am saying is that what we are finding on ourinspections now might be evidence that the level of riskmay indeed be increasing. If that is the case, it is mycontention that Robert Francis’ Inquiry into Mid Staffshospital has lessons from which the prison service, if itwas prudent, could learn. I say this not to point the fingerat things that are going wrong, but to try and preventthat happening, as is my duty to do.

So what are the remedies? Again what RobertFrancis talked about in relation to Mid Staffs has relevancefor the prison services. He stressed the need for strongcommon values and fundamental standards — standardsthat reflect what the public see as essential. For me thatreinforces the value of our human rights based, outcomefocussed Expectations. And since coming into this role, Ihave been struck by the very consistent support there isfor that approach from prison managers and staffthemselves. I think they are viewed more uneasily in someother quarters — but we will not change that approach.When those standards are breached in hospital, Francisurges that services should be closed, where appropriate,individuals held to account and individual incidents

12 Issue 211

34. Robert Francis QC. King’s Fund Conference 27 February 2013 Lessons from Stafford.

Figure 7: Mid Staffs: a negative culture

PRESSURETargetsFinanceFT statusJobs

HABITUATIONToleranceDenial

External reassuranceSomeone else’s

problem

BEHAVIOURUncaring

UnwelcomingBullying

Keeping headdown

REACTIONFear

Low moraleIsolation

DisengagementNo openess

Prison Service JournalIssue 211 13

investigated and remedial action taken. My experience isthat if I have raised serious concerns with NOMSmanagement following an inspection, action is takenwhich I welcome. You would be a better judge than I ofwhether that represents the general picture.

Francis urges the need for openness, candour andtransparency. In prison terms, I think that needs constantattention as the nature of the business may create aculture that militates against it.

Finally he talks about a system of regular and riskbased inspection with which providers have a duty to co-operate, that has user experience at its heart and one thatdoes not rely on self-assessment but requires proof ofcompliance with fundamental standards.

If you look at these remedies that Robert Francisproposes for the health service, the prison service couldsay with some justification that many, although not all ofthem, are in place and I hope we contribute to that. Sowhile I believe that the prison service is carrying a higherlevel of risk, and some of the features Robert Francisfound in Mid-Staffs can be found in failing prisons and soneed vigilance to prevent, I think it is better placed to

identify and remedy them. However, the systems fordoing so are now stretched and my advice to Ministers isto be very, very careful before they stretch them further orexpect them to carry a heavier load.

When he submitted his report, Robert Francis wrotea covering letter to the Secretary of State for Health whichwas published alongside the report. In the final paragraphof the letter he says this:

If there is one lesson to be learnt, I suggest it isthat people must always come before numbers.It is the individual experiences that lie behindstatistics and benchmarks and action plans thatreally matter, and that is what must never beforgotten when policies are being made andimplemented.35

Not a bad message, I would say, for the politicians,civil servants, NOMS, governors, prisoner officers, staff —and inspectors trying to help the prison service deal withcontraction in an age of expansion.

35. Robert Francis QC. Press release: Final Report Of The Independent Inquiry Into Care Provided By Mid Staffordshire NHS FoundationTrust.


Does ‘Contraction in an Age of Expansion’ refer tothe contraction of the public sector share of theprison system and the concomitant expansion ofthe role of providers of what is inelegantly referredto as ‘outsourced’ services? Or does it refer to thecontraction of resources as part of theGovernment’s deficit reduction strategy whileambitions for what prisons are required to do areexpanding? The title begs a question about howthose who run prisons manage competing demandsbut in a way which remains ethically sound?

This is standard fare for prison governors — runningprisons is never only about dealing with one set of issues.The art of governing prisons has always involvedreconciling issues which pull you in different directions atthe same time. The reflex response to prioritise is toosimplistic: for while sometimes the importance of onematter over another is obvious, prioritisation can tooeasily result in the sole concentration with the ‘here andnow’. The passive acceptance that if things are importantthey will become important is a counsel of despair.Actually, there is little which goes on in prison which isn’trightly very important to someone. Priorities too oftendepend on one’s standpoint. And while good governorswill endeavour to see things from different points of view,it’s hard always to be rigorously objective.

So, how do those who run prisons managecompeting demands but in a way which remains ethicallysound? In answering that question I shall provide anupdate on the delivery of benchmarking in the first 52prisons (the local and category C prisons) which constitutePhase 1 of the benchmarking project); and address twoissues which connect with the theme of ‘contraction andexpansion’. First, that benchmark is not a ‘one size fits all’prescription but a means of reconciling the need forgreater consistency across a diverse estate at a time offinancial retrenchment. The benchmark is less a ‘blueprint’in the original meaning of that word than an approach;and that that approach is pragmatic and principled notProcrustean. Second, is recognition of the central role ofthe prison officer and all staff who have contact withprisoners, which is built into the design of the benchmark.It is upon the skill with which this role is performed thatthe management of some of the most acute issues in theday-to-day life in prison depend — the reconciliation ofcompeting demands of contraction and expansion aremanaged at the micro level. This role is central to an

effective ‘whole prison approach’ in benchmarking whichis encapsulated in the concept of ‘every contact matters’.

Benchmarking Phase 1

Benchmarking is the public sector’s opportunity todesign and deliver itself out of competition. Late lastsummer we were speculating about how many of the sixpublic sector-run prisons being competed we wouldretain and whether we would win the Wolds. No onepredicted that, albeit with the bitter blow of losingNorthumberland and South Yorkshire, we would be giventhe opportunity to avoid competition in the future.However, we retained Durham, Onley and Coldingley notbecause of the strength of our bids for those prisons butbecause of the strength of what we could deliver if weapplied the benchmark of our bids in all the other publicsector prisons. The prize is to reengineer the way we runprisons so that it wouldn’t make sense to compete themin the future. Competition hasn’t gone away: if we don’tseize the opportunity we have been given, competitionwill return — and we may not be given the chance totake part.

The application of the benchmark to the 52 local andcategory C prisons is complete and plans for theimplementation of the changes over the next 18 months.The challenge is to deliver additional efficiencies of £84min 2013—14 and £75m in 2014—15. We are on track todeliver these efficiencies which actually represent someincrease in the resources of two prisons and savingsranging between a few per cent to over 20 per cent inothers. The range of the savings is healthy: it reflects themore sophisticated approach benchmark providescompared to the crude approach we have traditionallyused of ‘top-slicing’ budgets which was indiscriminateand often unfair.

But benchmarking is not only about efficiencies. In thePhase 1 prisons we will increase by over 9,000 the numberof work places for prisoners enabling a 29 per cent increasein purposeful activity. This isn’t any old work. Work andtraining is being shaped in each prison to match theemployment market opportunities in the areas where theprisoners are to resettle on release. In the Local prisonsprisoners will be unlocked for 9¼ hours Monday to Fridayand 8 hours at weekends. At Wandsworth, this will enablethrough the use of a ‘split regime’ (with some prisonersworking a morning shift and some the afternoon shift) the



Ian Mulholland is Deputy Director of Public Sector Prisons.


provision of an additional 403 work places — a total of673 with 418 of them full-time — and an increase inpurposeful activity of 25 per cent from 10,891 hours perweek to 13,648. In the category C prisons, prisoners will beunlocked for 10¼ hours Monday — Friday and for eighthours at weekends, which at Onley will enable a 32 percent increase in the number of work places from 511 to742 and an increase in purposeful activity of 50 per centfrom 16,481 hours per week to 24,736.

I recognise that delivery, full implementation will bethe acid test. The careful planning for this — using athree-stage ‘mobilisation, transition and transformation’process which ensures that the preparation for ‘going live’is well grounded — is well in hand; and at five prisons —Only, Durham, Coldingley, Dartmoor and Rochester, our‘early adopters’ — there are healthy signs that we are ontrack to deliver successfully.

A Pragmatic not a Procrusteanbenchmark

There is a concern thatbenchmarking is a ‘one size fits all’prescription, a centrist approachwhich will squeeze out any scopefor local innovation or discretion.The Prison Service is a large andquite a diverse organization andwrestles with the thorny issue ofhow to ensure consistency — forgood rights-based reasons as wellas for reasons of efficiency andeffectiveness — without alsoimposing a slavish conformity to aprescriptive set of requirementswhich don’t meet the needs of each prisoner or reflect thediffering infrastructures and conditions in which prisonersare held. Put simply it is a question of the extent to whichthe ‘centre’ or headquarters of an organisation dictateswhat happens ‘on the ground’; or what is sometimesreferred to as an organisation’s ‘loose/tight’ properties inwhich a balance between central control and localdiscretion has to be struck.

In organisations like supermarkets it is easier to justifygreater central prescription. There, questions such as howmany shelves of beans of a particularly brand should bedisplayed with such-and-such a discount for how long,can be determined remotely but such questions have noparallel in prisons. That is not to say there is no scope forconsistency. Benchmarking seeks to provide an approachwhich ensures consistency of standards while giving scopeto make such differences as different prisoner populationsand different prisons necessarily require.

Following the Whitemoor and Parkhurst escapes inthe mid 1990s, the mass of inconsistent and often unclearadvice and direction contained in various communications

from Standing Orders to Circular Instructions and otherless formal pieces of instruction and advice, were replacedby much more consistently set out and much moreprescriptive instructions which clarified what a governor‘must’ and what a governor ‘might’ do. In time the over-prescriptive nature of this approach (which reinforced themanagerialist approach to public service provision), whichoften tended to drive up costs, was gradually replacedwith a sharper focus on ‘outcomes’. The advent of‘commissioning’ has sharpened the emphasis on the‘what’ which has naturally prompted debate about howthe ‘what’ is measured — binary measures of reconvictionare not the most meaningful proxy of success. But prisonscannot be defined by ‘outcomes’ alone: the fundamentalimportance of the principle of decency alone requirescareful consideration of the ‘how’. Benchmarkingrecognises this.

In essence benchmarkinginvolves a simpler and moreefficient method of resourcingprisons within a frameworkdefined by a prison’s daily routine— the ‘core day’. The outcomesshow we can make efficiencieswithout retrenching regimes. Wecan actually do better. We achievethis because benchmarking is apragmatic and principled not aProcrustan approach. Procrustes,you will recall, was the tyrant inAncient Greece who ensured hisguests fitted the bed he offeredthem either by stretching them ifthey were too small or choppingoff parts of their limbs if they were

too large. Unlike Procrustes benchmarking adjusts thebed. And we make that adjustment in two ways.

First, for example, in the category C prisonbenchmark we have distinguished and differentiatedprovision for foreign national prisoners, for prisons withpersonality disorder units, for the restorative justice pilots;and at HMPs Bure and Whatton we have adjustedprovision to accommodate the larger number of older,retired prisoners. We have also adjusted provision toensure that the offender management function isresourced to reflect the greater weight of work involved inprisons with a higher proportion of public protectioncases. The fact that we will have different benchmarks forprisons which hold women, young adults, the mostdangerous and the youngest of all also serves to illustratethat benchmarking is far from being the centrallyprescriptive ‘one size fits all’ solution to delivering anadditional cost efficiencies in both this and the nextfinancial year.

Secondly, benchmarking provides not a flat-packIKEA kit which governors have simply to put together but

There is a concernthat benchmarking isa ‘one size fits all’

prescription, a centristapproach which willsqueeze out anyscope for localinnovation ordiscretion.


a resource provision and the capacity for a regime whichcan be can be shaped to suit the facilities of each prisonand to meet the particular needs of prisoners.Benchmarking contributes to the ‘new ways ofmanaging, working and delivering’ which Michael Spurr,Chief Executive of NOMS, has promoted. Key to thiscontribution is the involvement of governors and stafflocally in both informing the initial application of thebenchmark principles and then in driving the planning ofthe implementation. Implementation is resourcedaccording to the scale of the challenge eachestablishment faces and the capability and capacity of theprison’s management team. Benchmarking promotes andenables problem solving.

‘Every contact matters’

It is one thing to have achange process which allows localmanagerial discretion andownership, another that thismeans it will deliver what is mostimportant in prisons: not justdecency, safety and security but anengagement with prisoners whichpotentiates change of the sortwhich the body of research ondesistance underpins. This sort ofchange increases the positive life-chances of prisoners and bestprotects the public by reducing therisk of harm prisoners present tothemselves and others in custodyand after their release. Central tothe achievement of this ambitionare the relationships between staffand prisoners. We have alwaysknown this but now we have a much betterunderstanding it. When about 25 years ago Ian Dunbararticulated the notion of ‘dynamic of security’1 — aconcept of security based upon more than proceduresand hardware, critically dependent on engaging prisonersnot only as fellow human beings and by providing themwith a purpose and with something to do in prison — weall instinctively knew what was meant but the means toachieving this weren’t that clear. Hence in part we coinedthe term ‘prison craft’, to denote the collection ofinterpersonal skills and landing know-how which makeall the difference.

The difference now is that due in no small part to theilluminating research Alison Liebling, Ben Crewe and

Susan Hulley2 at Cambridge have conducted over severalyears, we have a better grasp of how to make provision ofa sort which can enable the best sort of staff-prisonerrelationships to flourish. This is not to suggest we have itcracked but that the social sciences have provided us withanalyses which show what makes prisons good prisons.This is a big subject and I shall focus on one aspect of theresearch into the quality of prison life, the values andpractices in public private sector prisons and into thedistinctiveness of the work of prison officers.

In working up our bids in the prisons competition weneeded to identify what was the irreducible core of ourwork, the essence without which we would not longer bea public sector Prison Service. In crude terms this boileddown to ‘make or buy’ decisions. This involved identifyingwhich services in a prison we should ‘make’ — that is,

directly employ staff to deliver; andwhich do we ‘buy’ — that is, let acontract for another organisationto deliver. We are in the middle ofa continuum at one end of which(where we were many years ago)where we directly employ staff todeliver almost all the servicesinvolved in running a prison. At theother end of the continuum, atleast hypothetically, we couldoutsource the delivery of allservices and leave the governor asa super contract manager. Werecognised the irreducible core asbeing defined by the role of prisonofficers perform, not asoperational supernumeraries butas central to establishing andsustaining a high quality of prisonlife. But we recognised too — and

devised in the new methodology we used in determiningthe number of prison officers we require to ensure safety,decency and security — that we had to break free fromthe constraints a very traditional, task-oriented approachto ‘profiling’ work and staffing it imposed.

We also recognised — another blinding flash of theobvious you might well think — that in addition to havingto have a more flexible approach to deploying andmanaging prison officers, we needed to integrate theirwork with those of every other person — member of staffor contractor — who works with prisoners. Theunhelpful, at times even tribal demarcation of uniformedand non-uniformed staff needed to go. We have toooften paid lip-service to ‘multi-disciplinary’ team working,

1. Dunbar, I. (1985) A Sense of Direction, London: Home Office.2. Liebling, A., Hulley, S. and Crewe, B. (2011), ‘Conceptualising and Measuring the Quality of Prison Life’, in Gadd, D., Karstedt, S. and

Messner, S. (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Criminological Research Methods. London: Sage; and Crewe, B., Liebling, A. and Hulley. S.(2011) ‘Staff culture, the use of authority, and prisoner outcomes in public and private prisons’ Australia and New Zealand Journal ofCriminology 44(1) 94–115.

This sort of changeincreases the positive

life-chances ofprisoners and best

protects the public byreducing the risk ofharm prisoners

present to themselvesand others in custody

and after theirrelease.


and we have also tended to understand — being as weare part of the Prison Service monolith — that partnershipwas essentially a ‘master/slave’ relationship. Thepartnerships we established with MITIE, Working Linksand Shaw Trust in the course of the prison competitiondisabused us of this and to be fair the best arrangementsgovernors around the country have established forworking well with education and health providers has alsoshown the way forward. This forced us to think againabout how the work of prison officers could form thefoundation of new operating model. The outcome wasmore than the slogan ‘every contact matters’ but acommitment to integrate the work of officers with allthose who deliver services in a prison. This was the basisof our ‘whole prison approach’ and key to it was what welearned from how the best prisons operate which is whatthe body of the Cambridge research reveals.

We used the term ‘Every Contact Matters’ because itneatly encapsulated the idea that however small orfleeting, experience and thedesistance research shows thateven the most common day-to-day interactions between everyonewho works in a prison andprisoners can and do make adifference. Importantly, altogetherif each of these contacts is positive,their cumulative impact can beprofound. They make a differenceto the tone and culture ofinstitutional life which becomesself-perpetuating: when positivethis helps not only promote safe,decent and secure conditions butpotentiates the benefits which‘what works’ literature shows that the delivery of serviceswhich meet prisoners’ criminogenic needs can realise. Weuse the term ‘Every Contact Matters’ to denote thetouchstone of the effective working practices withinteams of staff, between teams of staff, and with andbetween individual members of staff and prisoners. Andit models behaviour which in turn influences howprisoners behave for the better. The idea provides thefocus for everyone who works in a prison: it is thecurrency of our interaction amongst everyone who livesand works in the prison; and it is the currency of ourinteraction with visitors and the wider community. So itreally is more than a slogan, and it is underpinned by theleadership role governors and their management teamsperform in meeting the challenges of ‘contraction in anage of expansion’; and, the findings of the researchCambridge University has conducted into thecharacteristics of the best prisons and the key role that

prison officers can play in potentiating change inprisoners.

The role of the governor as leader and thesupporting role of his or her management team — notjust the senior managers but every manager — is crucialto enabling prison officers and all staff to perform theirroles best. At a time of great change particularly thisaspect of the governor’s role is important to stress.

The leadership role depends upon personal visibility— not just of the governor which is crucial — but allmanagers. This visibility enables leaders to modelbehaviours and to communicate their expectations so thathigh standards become ‘givens’. Visibility isn’t one-waycommunication, it’s about listening as well as telling, andit’s about asking probing questions — this is a sure way ofavoiding what Anne Owers tellingly termed the ‘virtualprison’ which exists in the mind of the governor.3 Thisvisibility is about setting the tone and gauging andinfluencing the culture of a prison. Every contact in the

performance of this aspect of theleadership role really does matter.Personal visibility builds staffconfidence, it helps reinforce thebest behaviours and challenges theworst. If the governor does this, itlegitimises all managers doing this,and if all managers do this theeffect becomes powerful.

Secondly, leadership requiresattention to ‘housekeeping’matters — not just cleanliness butorderliness in terms ofaccountability for the roll in theworkshop, in visits, on the landingand on the exercise yard — and

lack of clutter and timeliness. This is also orderliness whichattends to the small details of prisoners’ lives. Thisattention to ‘housekeeping’ will have also impactpositively on prisoner behaviour and staff morale. Whiletoo much attention to detail can lead you to get lost in theweeds, too little leaves a leader exposed.

Thirdly, the leadership role which enables andsustains the crucial role of officers and staff who workdirectly with prisoners, requires the governor tocommunicate key messages clearly and consistently.While the accessibility and immediacy of moderncommunication can facilitate, it can also too easilyconfuse not least by providing such a plethora ofinformation that key messages get lost. If leaders do notprovide clear messages about collective purpose and whatis important, misinformation will too easily fill the void. Inthe context of ‘contraction and expansion’ and inmanaging competing demands, the need for clear

3. Owers, A. (2007) Imprisonment in the twenty-first century: a view from the inspectorate in Jewkes, Y (ed) Handbook on PrisonsCullompton: Willan p.1-21.

. . . even the mostcommon day-to-dayinteractions betweeneveryone who worksin a prison and

prisoners can and domake a difference.


4. Liebling, A (2011) ‘Distinctions and distinctiveness in the work of prison officers: Legitimacy and authority revisited’, European Journalof Criminology 8(6): 484-499.

5. Liebling, Crewe and Hulley (2011) see n.2.6. Ibid.

communication is even more important. Thecommunication aspect of the leadership role is perhapsmost important in such times in providing a rationale forwhat’s happening. So in addition to providing directionand clarity about the four or five things which are mostimportant and which are linked to values, the leadersmust communicate an explanation. While the ‘what’ isclearly important and the ‘how’, leaders need to convinceon the ‘why’ too.

It may sound a little glib to suggest that theleadership role is simply about being visible, attention todetail when it matters and being a good communicator— and I recognise that the managerial challengegovernors face is more complex — but these features arekey to enabling the work of prison officers whichCambridge research has shown can be crucial in enablingprisoners to change their lives.

In developing the thinking for the bids, whichunderpins the benchmarking approach, we discussed indetail with Alison Liebling and Ben Crewe at Cambridgethe implications of their findings. Probably the mostimportant one of which was that staff professionalism,and the professionalism of officers in particular, is anunder-appreciated strength of public sector prisons. AsLiebling herself put it:

What is distinctive about prison officer work isthat it is based on, or requires, a sophisticated,dynamic and often subtle use of power,through enduring and challenging relationshipswhich has effects on recipients. This is highlyskilled work. Competence in this area — in theuse of authority — contributes most to prisonerperceptions of the quality of like in, or moralperformance of, a prison.4

The comparative study of two public sector and twoprivate sector prisons confirmed earlier research findingsthat the way prison staff use their authority makes a hugedifference to the quality of a prison.5 The study identifiedthe ‘professionalism’ of officers as comprising ‘staffprofessionalism’, ‘bureaucratic legitimacy’, ‘fairness’ and‘organisation and consistency’. These dimensionsrepresent the key aspects of the ‘craft’ of prison work.They shape the way it is carried out and they involveindeed require a general expertise — communication andother skills — and experience; and they also involvedinternalised as well as organisational values — hence theimportance of the role of leaders setting this out and

modeling them. These dimensions are very important inthe statistically derived models of prison quality — theyare the main contributors to the ‘weight’ (the‘psychological burden of imprisonment’), the overallquality of prison life and the ‘personal development’ ofprisoners.

So you can see why if you have to place officers atthe core of your operating model; and this is why we haveincluded in the role for prison officers a responsibility as‘offender supervisors’ in the broader ‘offendermanagement’ model and in the delivery of someprogrammes. Both these elements of the prison officerrole anticipate the changes which the reforms ofprobation will bring about, not the least significant ofwhich for prisons will be the ‘out-sourcing’ of what arereferred to as ‘through the gate’ services. The probationreforms are a fundamental change to the criminal justicesystem. In the diversification of provision we are makingprison officers central not marginal to the reforms. This isparticularly given the opportunity our competitors inrunning prisons will have to provide outsourced probationservices too.

While the Cambridge research identified that publicor private operation of prisons is not the most importantvariable in determining prison quality, it does suggest thatthe public sector potentially possesses greater strength.The public sector has an advantage over most privatesector prisons in the key area of ‘professionalism’, mainlybecause our officers tend to be more experienced andmore confident in performing their role. Hitherto we haveunderestimated this. What benchmarking seeks to do isto make proper provision and to enable ‘a model of prisonofficer work that is confident, authoritative and pro-active’.6 It boils down to this:

benchmarking is founded fundamentally on theneed to ensure safety, decency and security;

but even at a time of major resource contraction andat a time when there is an expansion of the role ofour competitors we are able to do more than deliverthe baseline requirements of safety, decency andsecurity;

we can expand the scope of our achievement bymaking public sector prisons the best on anymeasure but particularly in potentiating change inprisoners,

which will make public sector prisons principled,purposeful and all who work in them rightly proud.


Context

When considering ‘Contraction in an Age ofExpansion’ in criminal justice and morespecifically, prisons, I contextualised it in myexperiences and understandings of prison. So myinterpretation is informed by my personalexperience of prison, my academic knowledge, myconsultancy work/research in prisons, and one ofmy current projects, namely British ConvictCriminology (BCC). BCC is an academic groupconsisting of ex-con academics, and non-conacademics, who share a similar critical perspectiveon crime, prisons/prisoners, the criminal justicesystem, and corrections/rehabilitation. Some ofour work involves direct correspondence withserving prisoners and former prisoners studyingcriminology or its cognate disciplines.1,2,3

Whilst BCC is a recent conception, its intellectualand theoretical foundations are rooted in the well-established Convict Criminology perspective. ConvictCriminology is a branch of criminology that emerged inthe United States in 1997. It was founded by formerprisoners, turned academics, who were dissatisfied andfrustrated with the absence of ‘prisoner voices’ inresearch on criminal justice issues. Led by formerprisoners, it is a controversial perspective, whichchallenges the way in which crime and correctionalproblems are traditionally represented and discussed byresearchers, policy makers and politicians. It approachesexisting practices, research and political commentary inthe US with a critical lens that is not only informed bypersonal experiences, but underpinned by theseexperiences.4,5 Therefore, Convict Criminology by itsvery nature privileges the ‘insider perspective’, a voicetypically excluded in academic criminology. Like otherdisciplines studying the nature of human behaviour andsocial life (in particular psychology) criminology

commonly neglects the perspectives and ‘real life’experiences of their participants. Typically, theseexperiences are explored through pre-conceivedcategories and concepts, and broader misguidedpositivist research frameworks that serve to constrain‘prisoner realities’ and mute the voice of the ‘prisoner’.

This discrepancy between the ‘lived realities ofprison’ and the academic knowledge is neatly capturedby Richards and colleagues in a book chapter aptlyentitled ‘Prisons as seen by Convict Criminologists’.6

We [the authors] never volunteered tobecome experts on prison. Our expertise is theresult of 40 years in prison, combined withextensive academic training that camelater…..we struggle to reconcile what weexperienced with the more benign accountsof prison life appearing in most criminologyand criminal justice articles and books.

In many respects, this resonates with myexperience, although for me the discrepancy betweenmy lived experience and academic accounts is as equallypronounced in life after prison, living with the label ‘ex-offender’; a label that still has significant implicationsfor me in the present. This is the case for many otherformer prisoners I have spoken to. In some contextsthere is little if any distinction between your formerstatus, ‘offender’ or ‘prisoner’ and your current one,‘ex-offender’ or ‘former prisoner’. In the eyes of manythis distinction does not exist, you are as Johnsonarticulates ‘morally contaminated’.7 So I use the term‘prisoner’ in its broadest sense here, to include thosethat despite leaving prison, still live with ‘the ghosts oftheir pasts’.

Based on these experiences, the experiences ofother ‘prisoners’ and subsequent discussions with twoother academics, Sacha Darke and Rod Earle, the idea

Issue 211 19

1. Aresti, A. (2012). Developing a Convict Criminology Group in the UK. Journal of Prisoners on Prisons: Volume 21, Number 1 & 2: ASpecial Issue Commemorating the 15th Anniversary of Convict Criminology.

2. Earle, R. (2011). Prison and University: A Tale of Two Institutions. Papers from the British Criminology Conference. The British Society ofCriminology, Vol 11: 20–37.

3. Aresti, A., Darke, S., & Earle, R. (2012). British Convict Criminology: Developing critical insider perspectives on prison. Inside Time,August 2012: 26.

4. Jones, R. S., Ross, I. R. Richards, S. C., & Murphy, D. S. (2009). The First Dime. A Decade of Convict Criminology. The Prison Journal,vol. 89, 2, 151–171.

5. Ross, J. I., & Richards, S. C. (Eds.) (2003). Convict Criminology: Belmont, California: Wadsworth.6. Richards, S. C., Lenza, M., Newbold, G. Jones, R. S., Murphy, D. S., & Grisby, R. S. (2010). In Martine Herzog-Evans (Ed.) Transnational

Criminology Manual Vol.3, (pp.343-360) The Netherlands: Wolf Legal Publishers.7. Johnson, R. (2002). Hard Time (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.


A Convict PerspectiveDr Andy Aresti is a lecturer at University of Westminster. He is a former prisoner.


of establishing a Convict Criminology group in the UKevolved. Critical to its conception, was a growingawareness that there were others like ‘us’; individualsthat had served time, and had made the all-importantshift in to academia, or were on the way to achievingthis. Through our teaching and personal involvement orcontact with NGO’s working in the criminal justice field,we were becoming increasingly aware that more andmore ‘prisoners’ in the UK were studying for degrees incriminology or its cognate disciplines, or were engagingin post graduate study. Some were doing masters, anda few doing PhD’s. This generated the belief that therewas a need to establish a Convict Criminology group,over here in the UK. This notion developed into a realitywhen BCC emerged in 2011.8

At present, BCC is growing with momentum and isbeginning to establish itself within criminology asdistinct from our UScounterparts. Whilst we sharemany of the same principles andi n t e l l e c t u a l / t h e o r e t i c a lfoundations with the US group,there are some significantdifferences, particularly in termsof localised understandings andexperiences of crime, prisons,resettlement and criminal justiceissues. Nevertheless, like many ofthe US Convict Criminologists Ishare the view that we need todevelop humane, effective andcost efficient prisons that areused sparingly. We also need to utilize and integrate‘prisoner voices’ in our academic understandings ofcrime, prisons, and ‘rehabilitation’ initiatives andstrategies, as well using this voice to inform policy thatimpinges on the life of the ‘prisoner’ in prison andthereafter.9

Given all that I have said so far, you probably won’tbe shocked to hear that my perception of prisons isquite negative, and moreover quite critical. For me‘expansion’ generates an image of the continualgrowth of the prison estate and the prison population,and a shift to a broader involvement of the privatesector in the provision of services within the prisoncomplex. In contrast, contraction generates an image ofa lack of resources and funds within the prison system,impacting on prison conditions and initiatives orstrategies that can facilitate desistance.

Despite this negative view, I would like to say thatI have met some very dedicated, helpful and supportiveprison staff whilst serving time, and when doingresearch in prisons. One person particularly sticks in mymind; the head of the education department at HMPPentonville back in the 1990’s when I was a servingprisoner. She went out of her way to support me andfacilitate my educational development. Whilst I can’t becertain, I believe that if it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t bestanding here speaking to you today, and I may wellhave not pursued a career in academia. That woman isvery special and will always have a place in my heart.

I have also come across resettlement teams inprison that demonstrate similar traits, working veryhard, and with dedication to help those imprisoned.Unfortunately, most if not all work under theconstraints of a risk adverse prison culture and out of

touch senior level officials, as wellas having to work with limitedresources.

Introduction

As we are all aware the lastfew decades or so, has seen adramatic increase in the prisonestate and prison population.Current discourses aroundincreasing the capacity of theprison estate, specifically, in theform of Titan prisons, mini Titanprisons, and prison clusters serve

to reinforce this trend. Interestingly, prison has becomean attractive alternative to more productive ways ofdealing with crime;10,11 a trend we have arguablyadopted from the USA, which currently boasts a prisonpopulation of around 2 million, and shows no real signsof waning. In the US, expansion not only manifestsitself in the growth of prisons, both structurally and interms of capacity, but also in terms of more punitivepenal policy and a shift to privatisation; an increasedinvolvement of the private sector in service delivery andthe ‘running’ of prisons. In this sense, expansion meansthe growth of prison as a business with fruitfuleconomic gains.12,13

When considering this growing trend forexpansion in its various guises, I question theimplications this has for society. Expansion is a netwidening process involving the growing criminalisation

20 Issue 211

8. Aresti, Darke, & Earle (2012) see n. 3.9. Richards, Lenza, Newbold, Jones, Murphy & Grisby (2010). See n. 6.10. Prison Reform Trust (2013). Bromley Briefings: Prison Fact File. London. Prison Reform Trust.11. Scott, D., & Codd, H. (2010). Controversial Issues in Prison. Maidenhead, Berkshire: Open University Press.12. Brewer, R. M., & Heitzeg, N. A. (2008). The Racialization of Crime and Punishment. Criminal Justice, Colour-Blind Racism, and the

Political Economy of the Prison Industrial Complex. American Behavioral Scientist, Vol 51, 4, 625–644.13. Christie, N. (2000). Crime Control as Industry: Towards Gulags, Western Style (3rd ed.). London: Routledge.

As we are all awarethe last few

decades or so, hasseen a dramaticincrease in theprison estate andprison population.


of particular populations in our society: the mostdisadvantaged, the marginalised and the mostvulnerable.14 Indeed, a tour of most prison wings in theUK will demonstrate the disproportionaterepresentation of these cohorts in the prisonpopulation. Interestingly, this is a mirror image of whatis happening in the US penal system. And whilstcontentious, the growing criminalisation andimprisonment of these particular cohorts may serve todivert our attention from the real underlying socialissues rife in our communities.15 Expansion can onlyserve to antagonise these issues.

Such concerns were common place when I was inprison in the 1990’s. Penalreformists were becomingincreasingly concerned with therising prison population and theimplications this has for thepeople living inside them andsociety. This was clearlyarticulated by penal reformist instatements like ‘the prisonpopulation is peaking at 64,000and is on the increase’, ‘prisonsare human warehouse’s’ and‘prisons are universities of crime’.Disturbingly, since then theprison population which iscurrently simmering at just below85, 00016 has increased by nearly20,000 in 15 years. If this trendcontinues, my own crudeprojections suggest that in fiftyyears, the prison populationcould potentially be over 140,000.

The problem with expansion

‘Contraction in an Age of Expansion’ should beunderstood in a broader context. Consideringexpansion without questioning the purpose of prisonsis illogical. If indeed prisons are primarily a means ofretribution and incapacitation then clearly expansionmakes sense. However, if they are equally a place for‘rehabilitation’ then expansion is problematic. In a sensethese concepts are contradictory; retribution andrehabilitation are a toxic mix. This is apparenthistorically and in the present where prison hasdemonstrated little rehabilitative success. Exceptionallyhigh reconviction rates within the first two years of

release reinforce this.17 And even here we need to becautious, as reconviction rates are a crude measure ofreoffending, and in reality reoffending rates are likely tobe considerably higher.

Considering this poor rehabilitative success, Iquestion the current drive for ‘prison expansion’ andthe government’s agenda, specifically its discoursearound the ‘rehabilitation revolution’. In my view, this‘drive’ underscores an alternative agenda; crime,punishment and prisons are very powerful political toolsthat not only feed into social anxieties regarding crimeand prisons, but arguably heighten these anxieties viaamplification and exaggeration18 of the ‘crime and

prison problem’. Of course this isa contentious area andstandpoint specific, and maybe alittle provocative, yet surely it isdifficult to contest that being‘tough on crime’ and introducingtougher penal policy is directlyrelated to political favour. Andarguably this cyclical processunderlies the drive for expansion,and consequently a drive towardsprivatisation. Prisons are not onlya means of social control they arealso a big business, and theprivatization of services andprisons provide fruitful pickingsfor those motivated by economicgains.

The idea of prisons as abusiness exploiting an expandingmarket fits neatly into currentcriminal justice ideology, which

typically works within a ‘managerialist’ framework thatis overly concerned with the cost effective and efficientrunning of the criminal justice system, rather than withthe root causes of crime. Consequently, prisons areprimarily concerned with security, ‘risk management’and control and so ‘rehabilitation’ is a secondaryconcern. Rehabilitation (encouraging desistance) isincompatible with the business objective of growth.Arguably it is also undermined by an over-emphasis onsecurity and minimising risk. The government’s agenda‘transforming rehabilitation’ has its roots in right wingideology, which privileges punishment and ‘efficientmanagement’ so it is difficult to see how a rehabilitativemodel can work under these conditions. In fact, whilst‘rehabilitation’ was firmly rooted in prison ideology inthe 1960’s and 70’s, limited success shifted the focus

Issue 211 21

If indeed prisons areprimarily a means ofretribution and

incapacitation thenclearly expansionmakes sense.

However, if they areequally a place for‘rehabilitation’ then

expansion isproblematic.

14. Waquant, L. (2008). Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Cambridge: Polity.15. Ibid.16. Ministry of Justice (2013). Monthly Population Bulletin, March 2013. London: Ministry of Justice.17. Prison Reform Trust (2013) see n. 10.18. Cohen, S. (2002). Folk Devils and Moral Panics. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.


from ‘what works’ to ‘nothing works’ in the 1980’s andmid 90’s. As a result the administrative approach gaineddominance, putting aside the rehabilitation agenda,and pushing forward a ‘managerial approach’, which ismore concerned with effective management, security,surveillance, prevention and control. The emergence ofa crime science in academia, anchored in this‘managerial approach’ clearly demonstrates this shift.

This ‘managerial approach’ is reflected in a ‘riskadverse’ prison culture, where the focus on ‘riskmanagement’ and control comes with a human cost,the prisoner’s personal development; a lack of trust andpersonal agency, along with an inability to takepersonal responsibility and little in the way ofrehabilitative strategies,collectively work to constrainmany attempts to implementpersonal change. This highlightsthe pragmatic incompatibility oftwo very diverse and competingworking models in the ‘reducingreoffending’ arena. At presentprisons typically work under a‘Risk-needs’ model19 which isdeeply rooted in the ‘risk adverse’prison culture. Here the prisoner’spotential risks for reoffending areidentified and these risks arereduced by trying to meet his orher needs. However, this isproblematic as the individual isarguably perceived as a set of riskfactors, rather than human, which is in stark contrast toa ‘Strengths based’ model, which is anchored indesistance theory, and focuses on the individual’sstrengths and other attributes, that can facilitate self-change and desistance.20,21 Whether such a model isconducive to a prison environment is questionable.

Set within these current ideological and culturalframeworks, ‘expansion’ (of the prison estate and itscapacity) can only serve to hinder attempts to use moreprogressive rehabilitation strategies or initiatives. Theclear lack of resources and funds in the prison complexintensifies the problem, as does the additional burdenof government proposed financial cutbacks. Moreover,the new payment by results (PBR) initiative in my viewwill only amplify this problem. Service providers will beunder even more pressure to perform and meet targets,and to provide evidence of reduced reoffending.Consequently, this will have a human cost as arguablycertain ‘model’ prisoners will be targeted or ‘cherrypicked’ as they will assist the service providers to

achieve results. In-effect this means that individuals thatreally need help and support, or are the hardest toreach are likely to suffer from little or poor serviceprovision. Arguably, the privatization of services willconfound this problem further. Whilst not to discreditthose working within the private sector, many whohave undoubtedly got a ‘conscience’, the ethos in theprivate sector is business orientated and thereforeprimarily motivated by economic gains, rather thanguided by ethical or moral duty.

Relative to this and other issues discussed, aconsequence of prison expansion will be a dramatic risein short term sentenced prisoners; more prisons orbigger prisons and increased capacity, will make prisons

an even more attractive optionwhen dealing with ‘minoroffenders’. Yet, as articulated bynumerous penal reformists that isPrison Reform Trust, the HowardLeague, there are a variety ofdifficulties and obstacles whenattempting to engage thisparticular cohort in rehabilitativestrategies or initiatives. Serviceproviders are unable to effectivelywork with short term sentencedprisoners. Considering this,together with the cost ofimprisonment, few could contestthe idea that valuable resourcesare wasted in this instance.

The challenges of negotiating a lawabiding identity

The psychological implications of imprisonment arewell documented (e.g. The Pains of Imprisonment)22

and can manifest themselves in a variety of waysincluding feelings of isolation, loss of self/identity,psychological trauma, negative self-conceptualisationand experiences of dehumanisation.

Despite these negative psychological experiences,we as a society have very high expectations of peopleleaving prison, expecting them to be crime/deviant free,and to be ‘model’ citizens. This is despite many recentlyreleased prisoner’s having to make a psychologicaladjustment to life on ‘the out’ and trying to negotiate acompetitive market that lacks opportunities andresources. Yet in addition to these barriers and thepresently dire economic climate, many former prisonersalso have to negotiate a ‘spoiled identity’ or their‘stigmatised ex-offender status’ which further

22 Issue 211

. . . the ethos in theprivate sector is

business orientatedand therefore

primarily motivatedby economic gains,rather than guided

by ethical ormoral duty.

19. Andrews, D. A., & Bonta, J. (2003). The Psychology of Criminal Conduct, (3rd ed.), Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing.20. Maruna, S. (2010). Understanding Desistance from Crime. London: NOMS.21. McNeill, F. (2006). ‘A desistance paradigm for offender management’. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 6, 39–62.22. Sykes, G. (1958). The Society of Captives: A study of a maximum security prison. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.


confounds their opportunities, as a custodial convictionsignificantly reduces this cohort’s life chances.23,24

Moreover, current legislation (ROA, 1974; EnhancedDisclosures Act, 1996) endorses this as these acts serveto limit and constrain legitimate employmentopportunities. So in-effect, prison expansion will resultin more people being imprisoned, and consequentlymore people being released into society with reducedlife opportunities, psychological/mental health issuesand further marginalisation.

One of the main problems with prison is that itdoes not, and cannot really prepare you for life afterrelease. At the very best, and this is an ideal, prison maybe able to help with the re-entry phase of resettlement,by meeting your basic needs that is help with housing,employment, benefits, dealing with addiction issuesetc. However, in terms of longterm resettlement or desistingfrom crime there is littleprofessional support. Desistancefor most is a long term process,whereby the intensity andfrequency of crime decreasesover a prolonged period of time.This involves a gradualpsychological and behaviouraltransformation and a shift from a‘criminal’ identity to a more pro-social or ‘law abiding’ identity.25

Yet whilst academically we areaware of this, we do not have procedures or systems inplace to accommodate this. This is particularly evidentwhen considering the high rate of licence recalls forminor misdemeanours.

Importantly, not many people really understandthe challenges and obstacles you face when having tonegotiate your ‘spoiled identity’ and the implicationsthis has for your self-esteem and sense of self. Despitethe dramatic changes I have made in my life, as noted,I still live with the stigmatised ‘ex-offender’ status, eventhough I left prison nearly 15 years ago. I still find thatI have to negotiate this stigmatised identity in certainsituations or contexts. For example, I still have to tickthe ‘box’ when asked if I have a criminal record whenapplying for jobs and in some instances, employers stillinsist that I have a CRB check. So for me there is alwaysthis existential tension where on the one hand, I have aPhD, and get to call myself Dr (arguably a pro-socialidentity), and on the other, I am still PC1804 (my prison

no.) a ‘morally contaminated’ ex-con. Of course I amnot alone, and many former prisoners have to live withthe damaging effects of the ‘label’. Yet arguably, I haveserved my time, and paid my dues, yet I am still beingpunished, or as I describe it I am ‘doing time after time’.

In many respects, you learn to deal with theseissues, and even the derogatory comments made aboutprisoners, or ex-offenders by those (oftenfriends/colleagues) who do not know about my past.However, what is hard to deal with is that someday Iwill have to tell my children about my past. This ofcourse pains me and is a constant source of tension. Ifear that they may find out prematurely, before they areold enough to understand, or that others (e.g. friend’sparents) will find out about my past, and thenstigmatise/marginalise them as a result of my past. The

following anecdote provides anexample of this tension.

Due to the nature of mywork, I exist in cyberspace anddetails of my colourful past arethere for all to see on theinternet. The other day at home,my 12 year old daughter was onthe Ipad and googled my name,telling me as she was doing it. Iinstantly panicked and wasconsumed with a fear of beingousted, and so flew across theroom and grabbed the Ipad, to

her bewilderment. In an agitated state, I asked her whatshe saw and what was said about me. Fortunately shewas none the wiser, but since then my fears haveintensified, because I might not be there the next time.

I guess my point here is this, prison expansion willresult in more people having to deal with and negotiatea ‘spoiled identity’ on release from prison. As I havearticulated, this is not easy and has a number ofimplications for how one perceives the self. For thosethat can successfully negotiate the stigmatised identity,desistance is likely to follow. However, as Maruna26

rightly points out, those who are unable to negotiatethis identity are likely to persist with crime.

Conclusion

In concluding, my first thoughts are why are weeven having this conversation? Expanding an alreadyfailing prison system that has little rehabilitative success

Issue 211 23

One of the mainproblems with

prison is that it doesnot, and cannotreally prepare youfor life after release.

23. Jones, R. S. (2003). Ex-con: Managing a spoiled identity. In J. I. Ross & S. C. Richards (Eds.), Convict Criminology (pp. 191–208).Belmont, California: Wadsworth.

24. Uggen, C., Manza, J., & Behrens, A. (2004). ‘Less than the average citizen’: Stigma, role transition, and the civic reintegration ofconvicted felons. In S. Maruna, & R. Burnett (Eds.), After crime and punishment: Pathways to offender reintegration (pp.261–293).Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing.

25. Maruna, S. (2001). Making Good: How ex-convicts reform and rebuild their lives. Washington, DC: American PsychologicalAssociation.

26. Ibid.


does not make sense. We should be engaging with analternative discourse; ‘contraction in an age ofreduction’ whereby we are talking about reducing theprison estate both structurally and in terms of capacity;and, in its position at the heart of punishing crime.Admittedly, we do need prisons but they should beused sparingly, as a last resort. The provision ofalternative non-custodial intervention strategies orinitiatives that are more cost effective should beprovided. This will release valuable resources for a muchsmaller prison estate whereby intervention strategiescan be implemented and tailored to accommodate theindividual’s needs.27

Whilst this seems logical to me and many others,these ideas do not really feature in the dominantdiscourses around prisons and rehabilitation. I questionthis. Why is prison such an attractive option despite itslack of rehabilitative success? As noted, prisons are abig business, employing a very large amount of people,both directly (prison staff, service providers, securityetc.) and indirectly (e.g. contractors who developsecurity systems, IT contractors, consultants etc.). Theyalso use private companies to supply goods (IT systems,furniture, gates etc.) and provide goods to them that is

the contracting of prison labour. The privatisation ofservices/prisons also provides substantial economicgains for those motivated by financial incentives,despite the ethical implications that is making moneyoff the backs of some of the most damaged andvulnerable people in our society.

Therefore whilst contentious, the notion of theprison industrial complex may well explain the realunderlying purpose of prison expansion. This conceptrefers to the rapid expansion of the prison estate and itspopulation in the US, and the political influence privatecompanies working in this field have in the provision ofservices and goods. Prisons are not only a big employerthey are also big business, so ‘expansion’ is a very goodway of providing employment and making money. Asmany a critic has articulated, the prison industrialcomplex is a ‘self-perpetuating machine’: thesubstantial investment in prisons, ‘correctional’facilities, and law enforcement strategies combinedwith the perceived, and unchallenged political benefitsof crime control have led to policies that ensure thatmore people are sentenced to prison, thereby creatingmore prison spaces.28,29,30

24 Issue 211

27. McNeill (2006) see n.21.28. Golash-Boza, T. (2009). The Immigration Industrial Complex: Why we Enforce Immigration Policies Destined to Fail. Sociology

Compass, 3/2, 295–309.29. Brewer & Heitzeg (2008). See n. 12.30. Ross & Richards (2003). See n. 5.


This paper addresses the topic of ‘Contraction inan Age of Expansion’ by exploring the notion ofTitan prisons and their impact upon staff culture.It adapts the notion of ‘diffidence’ to explain staffculture and the manner in which this can lead totoxic behaviours that impact on the carceralexperience of prisoners, the delivery of coreactivities and the safety of all those who inhabit aprison. This is especially pertinent with regard torecent announcements by The Justice Minister,Chris Grayling, about the possibility of futurelarge site prisons both in North Wales and,potentially, within the M25, and the subsequentrating failures of HMP Oakwood and Thameside.1

The question that immediately presents itself whenthe Titan prison is discussed is: Does the size of theprison really matter and, if it does, in what way? Insome regards the reasoning behind the Titan followsthe belief that a large institution may be able to deliverservices to a greater number for a much lower cost. Asargued below this efficiency-utilitarian perspectiveposes problems for a prison but nevertheless isattractive to commissioners concerned with fiscalconstraints. However, with regard to a penalestablishment designed for human, not to mentionhumane, habitation there is a simple answer to thisquestion. Yes, size does matter and bigger is not better.

I approach this subject not just as a researcher, noras a former prisoner who was incarcerated between1992 and 2004, but also as a professional workingwithin the modern prison system. In one regard oranother I have, in the last 20 years or so, either lived,worked or studied in prisons of varying sizes andstructure. All this experience informs me that smaller issocially, morally and operationally better. This is anopinion shared by many of those who have commentedupon this issue since its major rebirth in the midNoughties.

In December 2007 the Government published LordCarter’s review on prisons2 and, amongst the manyrecommendations made was the notion of

regenerating the particular Victorian penal fetish ofbuilding three giant prisons (2500+) which becameknown as the ‘Titan’ prison plan. Theserecommendations came after an extended period ofrapid expansion which had seen the population bloomfrom a little over 43,000 in the early 1990s to over80,000 at the time the report was being compiled.3 Thisinevitably led to a situation where overcrowding, risingcosts and constraints on effective delivery wereprevalent and it was posited, largely without evidence,that these ‘Titans’ would ease the burden ofovercrowding whilst at the same time providing a morefiscally efficacious penal estate. Jack Straw, the Ministerof the day, and the wider Government immediatelyaccepted the proposals (which we now understand tohave been predetermined by various politicalinfluences)4 and launched a programme of expansion ofa further 10,500 spaces to increase the operationalcapacity of the estate of England and Wales to 96,000by 2014.5

This was a position that was reaffirmed by theGovernment throughout 2008 but which came undersustained attack and condemnation from all informedand interested quarters — HMCIP, the Prison GovernorsAssociation, the POA, the Prison Reform Trust, theHoward League, and others. All penal commentators,eventually even the Daily Mail, condemned theproposals and to a certain degree the ‘Titan’ retreatedinto the background of penal policy. The problem, asevident from recent MoJ announcements, is that theproposals never died; they did not ‘melt into air’ asmuch political rhetoric has a tendency to do, and, like aspectral hobgoblin, have thus haunted penal discourseever since.

In these times of ever diminishing budgets,benchmarking and constrained service delivery it is nowonder that the ‘spectre’ of the Titan has re-emerged,from the dark recesses of the punitive political mind.Thus we find ourselves, once again, having to addressthe notion of why these Titans, the monolithicremnants of the ‘Victorian penal imagination’,6 are a

Issue 211 25


Does Prison Size Matter? Jason Warr is Programme Manager and Research Co-ordinator at User Voice and a PhD candidate at the

University of Cambridge. He was formerly a prisoner.

1. NOMS (2013), Prison Annual Performance Ratings 2012-2013, National Offender Management Service: London. 2. Ministry of Justice (2007), Lord Carter of Coles Securing the Future, proposals for the efficient and sustainable use of custody in

England and Wales.3. Berman, G. (2013), Prison Population Statistics, SN/SG/4334, House of Commons Library. 4. Prison Reform Trust (2008), Titan Prisons: A Gigantic Mistake, Briefing Paper, PRT: London.5. House of Commons (2008), Written responses to MP’s Questions, 6 February 2008: Column 1193.6. Jewkes, Y and Johnston, H (2007), ‘The Evolution of Prison Architecture’, in Y. Jewkes (ed), Handbook on Prisons, Willan Publishing.


bad idea. This of course returns us to the beggedquestion posed above: What is wrong with largeprisons?

The Prison Reform Trust, in its response to LordCarter’s report, highlighted four core concerns withthe plans.7 These were: both the widespread andprobative depth of concerns articulated from allinformed and expert stakeholders; the distinct lack ofevidence for the fiscal and operational efficacy ofsuch prisons; that the report was flawed, partial andpredetermined; and that building more prisons wasan admission of a failing penal policy. Alison Liebling,the Director of the Prisons Research Centre at theInstitute of Criminology, University of Cambridge,raised many of the same issues, questioning not onlythe evidence for, but also the ideological foundationof, the ‘efficiency-utilitarianposition’ taken by Lord Carter,and the Government of the day,as well as raising deep concernswith regard to the moralperformance of suchestablishments as well as thepractical management andoperational difficulties thatwould inevitable arise from theuntested service share/deliverymodel being proposed.8

Like many of the otherindividuals and groups whoechoed and promulgated sucharguments, I share thesesentiments, but wish to add afurther nail to the coffin of theTitan in the hope that this notion, so attractive to thosepenal profiteers (privateers?) who have littered theGovernments of the last 20 years, in the ground onceand for all. The notion I wish to introduce to thisdiscourse is staff ‘diffidence’ and the manner in whichit can adversely impact both safety and security withina prison.

The notion of diffidence is taken from the 17thCentury philosopher Thomas Hobbes.9 In his seminaltext, ‘The Leviathan’, Hobbes posited the idea of theState of Nature, an imaginary primordial state ofexistence whereby every person lies in contention,either physical or psychological, with every otherperson. In this state of perpetual ‘war’, it is not the

intermittent physical battle that so wearies theindividual but rather the constant competition andhostility whereby individuals become inherentlymistrustful, wary and rightfully paranoid about theirfellow competitors.

For war consisteth not in battle only, or theact of fighting, but in a tract of time, whereinthe will to contend by battle is sufficientlyknown: and therefore the notion of time is tobe considered in the nature of war, as it is inthe nature of weather. For as the nature offoul weather lieth not in a shower or two ofrain, but in an inclination thereto of manydays together: so the nature of war consistethnot in actual fighting, but in the known

disposition thereto during allthe time there is noassurance to the contrary.(p77-78).10

It is this state of being whichHobbes called diffidence — ‘ageneralised insecurity and aconsumptive wariness’ regardingthose with whom one iscompelled to co-exist.11 It is fromthis state of diffidence thatHobbes eventually predicates thesocial contract of base societies— a contract that ensures theprotection and survival of itssignatories. Prisons are not Statesof Nature in the sense that

Hobbes outlined. Nevertheless, they are places ofhostility, competing interests and matrices of power,mistrust, wariness, psycho-panoptic surveillance(everyone watching, evaluating and judging everyoneelse) and, therefore, justified paranoia. In essence, theyare places where diffidence, in the Hobbesian sense,not only exists but is also perpetuated.

As described elsewhere,12 diffidence, and itsalleviation, are major factors in the penal life ofprisoners. However, prisoners are not the only peoplewho inhabit the prison and who shape, and are shapedby, the emotional landscape. Staff members are too,and as we know from a number of sources (Liebling etal 2010,13 Liebling and Arnold 2004,14 Crawley and

26 Issue 211

The notion I wish tointroduce to thisdiscourse is staff

‘diffidence’ and themanner in which itcan adversely

impact both safetyand security within

a prison.

7. Ministry of Justice (2007),see n.2.8. Liebling, A (2008) ‘’Titan’ Prisons: do size, efficiency and legitimacy matter?’, in M. Hough, R. Allen and E. Solomon (eds) Tackling

Prison Overcrowding: Build More Prisons? Sentence Fewer Offenders? Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 63-80.9. Hobbes, T (1651) Leviathan, Edited by Richard Tuck (1996), Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, Cambridge University Press.10. Ibid.11. Crewe, B, Warr, J, Bennett, P and Smith, A (in press) ‘The Emotional Geography of Prison Life’, Theoretical Criminology.12. Ibid.13. Liebling, A., Price, D. and Shefer, G (2010), The Prison Officer, 2nd Edn, Routledge.14. Liebling, A. and Arnold, H. (2004), Prisons and their Moral Performance: A Study of Values, Quality and Prison Life, Oxford University Press.


Crawley 2008,15 Warr 2007,16 etc.) that prison officersare just as vulnerable to the negative influences of theprison environment as are others who inhabit the samespace. As such, uniformed staff are also subject to thevarious States of Diffidence that can exist in prisons.What, then, does this have to do with large prisons?

It is the conjunction of two factors which make theTitan prison a place more likely to involve higher statesof diffidence. The first conjunct is the greater likelihoodof spatial conditions that are reminiscent of theprecursor conditions from which Sykes derived the‘pains of imprisonment’ known as the deprivation ofsecurity.17 In Sykes’s study, the spatial conditions of theprison that engendered the greatest losses of securitywere those areas where theformal power of the staff wasthinnest, or lightest, and wherethe malignant aspects of prisonerpower were allowed to dominateor flourish. This could occur inthose areas where staff had lessof a presence or in those areaswhere their surveillance did notpenetrate — of course this couldalso then occur when staff levelshave fallen to either a direct orperceived dangerous level. Thesecond conjunct is the findings ofMegargee who found thatpopulation density and thesubsequent restriction onpersonal space is closelycorrelated with the conditions inwhich disruptive, anti-social andviolent behaviour aregenerated.18

When these two factors, which together not onlycompound but also promote the likelihood of anegative environment, are coupled with marketpressures, in which all prisons (either private or publicsector) have to perform under ever tightening financialconditions and labour savings, this results inenvironments where hostilities, rivalries and resourcecompetition are heightened. It is my contention that itis in such prisons, where there are large numbers of

prisoners, where staff feel that their numbers have beenreduced to dangerous numbers, where targets andfiscal concerns dominate Governing decisions, that thestate of staff diffidence — that sense of ‘generalisedinsecurity and consumptive wariness’ — is not onlymost likely to be prevalent and profound but also tobecome ‘toxic’ to the prison environment and corrosive,in the manner described by Sim,19 to the lives ofprisoners and wider staff populations.

Proponents of these carceral monoliths haveargued that these issues are not relevant because‘Titans’, in their modern incarnation, are designedaround a cluster model whereby four or five selfcontained prisons, with populations of 4-500, are

formulated within one securedsite. Thus, they argue, theseprisons operate, socially if notmanagerially, as separate entities.However, we know that it ispossible, even in overtsituationally controlledenvironments such as this, thatboth intra- and inter-unit culturalinfluence can still occur.20

Evidence from HMP Oakwood21

highlights that when poor designand corner cutting occur issuesthat begin in one block can thenrepeat in other blocks. Theseexamples, and those from othersuch establishments (e.g.Mountjoy in Ireland),22 seems tocounter the argument made byTitan proponents and shows thatissues that occur in one unitaffect the social world of the

other units.I It must be acknowledged that the socialworld of such prisons is little studied or understood.Nevertheless, it is my contention that, as cross culturalinfluence is possible between units, these clusteredprisons are just as vulnerable as any other prison to theinfluence of staff diffidence.

What of ‘toxicity’ then? It is in this wary, mistrustfuland paranoid environment that certain ‘toxic’ staffbehaviours become apparent. Elaine and Peter

Issue 211 27

. . . it is mycontention that, ascross cultural

influence is possiblebetween units,these clusteredprisons are just asvulnerable as anyother prison to theinfluence of staff

diffidence.

15. Crawley, E. and Crawley, P. (2008), ‘Understanding Prison Officers: Culture, Cohesion and Conflicts’, in J. Bennett, B. Crewe and A.Wahidin (eds) Understanding Prison Staff, Willan Publishing.

16. Warr, J. (2007), ‘Personal Reflections of Prison Staff’, in J. Bennett, B. Crewe and A. Wahidin (eds) Understanding Prison Staff, WillanPublishing.

17. Sykes, G. M. (1958), The Society of Captives: A study of a Maximum Security Prison, Princeton University Press.18. Megargee, E. (1976), ‘Population Density and Disruptive Behaviour in a Prison Setting’, in A. Cohen, G. Cole and R. Bailey (eds), Prison

Violence, Lexington Books.19. Sim, J (2007), ‘An Incovenient Criminological Truth: Pain, Punishment and Prison Officers’, in J. Bennett, B. Crewe and A. Wahidin (eds)

Understanding Prison Staff, Willan Publishing.20. Wortley, R. (2002), Situational Prison Control: Crime Prevention in Correctional Settings, Cambridge University Press.21. IMB (2013), Annual Report HMP Oakwood: 24th April 2012 – 31st March 2013, Ministry of Justice.22. Personal Communication for Governor of Mountjoy Prison.


Crawley23 note that cynicism and suspicion can play amajor part in the rank and file of the prisoner officerbody and that when these behaviours dominate the ‘in-group’ (a group of mutually identifying staff members),they can often perceive themselves as being threatenedand besieged. This ‘diffidence’ with regard to the ‘out-group’ (usually prisoners, but also sometimes seniormanagement) manifests itself in five core behaviours:first, increasing wariness and suspicion about theprisoner body that flows and ebbs around them — anissue that is often underpinned by what Sim (2007)24

refers to as a prevailing discoursewhereby this stereotypical viewof staff/prisoner relationship hasbecome ‘normalised’; second, abanding together (with commonpurpose — as with the socialcontract) and solidification of aself interested group identity;third, a retreat from the widerspaces to safe (i.e. staff) areas —most commonly, in Britishprisons, the wing office, wherestaff feel fortified; fourth, reactiveand aggressive use of formal andinformal processes of sanctiondesigned to pre-empt thehostility of the ‘out-group’; andfifth, an increasingly insularoutlook that prioritises theinterests and beliefs of thebanded group and rejectsperspectives, interests and beliefsthat either challenge or counterthose of their own. This lastprocess is related to the notion ofwhat Stanley Cohen25 might wellrefer to as a micro-culturalimplicatory form of denial, thatis, a form of cultural behaviourwhere the negative impact of the group’sbanding/retreat cannot be accepted — or, if the impactis perceived,a minimisation and dismissal of its moralconsequences. These toxic behaviours have a slidingscale of effects from the rather minor inconvenience ofwing life under an un-interested staff right through tomore serious effects that can impact on the safety of allthose who inhabit a prison.

To illustrate this point I use the example of onefairly large (1,000+ places) local prison that I shall referto as Prison A. This prison, partially a large traditional

radial design coupled with more modern ‘New-Build’units, had undergone a number of major changes atthe time that I visited (during mid 2012) and had seenstaff numbers reduced at a time when operationally theprison was already somewhat stretched. In all ways, theprison was an environment where staff diffidence wasrife. On some wings this was manifested in minor toxicbehaviours whereby it would be difficult to get staff toengage in the kind of collaborative behaviours thatmake a wing run smoothly — they were officious,adopted a ‘computer says no’ attitude and used their

power in unpredictable andarbitrary ways. This resulted infrustration and anger andexacerbated problems oflegitimacy.26

However, on other wingsthere were more seriousmanifestations. On one of thewings, staff had banded andretreated to such an extent thatsome of the core duties werebeing misconducted —applications, mail, visits, phonecalls, food, kit change (the PrimeDirectives, or core deliverables asit were) were all being negativelyimpacted. In some instances,these practices were either beingwilfully blocked or neglected.Because of staff diffidence, andits subsequent form ofimplicatory denial, the concernsof the prisoners on the wingwere being ignored becausethey now ran counter to those ofthe staff, fortified in their wingoffice. This resulted in bitterness,anger and a sense ofhopelessness amongst the

prisoners about the possibility of resolving these issuesby legitimate means. Increasingly, prisoners felt thatthey were being pushed to a situation wherebyillegitimate means of protest were all that was leftopen to them. This is exactly one of the precursorsthat Lord Woolf so aptly described in his report intothe Strangeway riots in the early 1990s.27 Thankfully,events overtook the situation and disaster/disorderwas averted, but if the situation had been allowed topertain for much longer, the results could have beenvery different.

28 Issue 211

Increasingly,prisoners felt thatthey were beingpushed to a

situation wherebyillegitimate meansof protest were allthat was left opento them. This isexactly one of theprecursors that LordWoolf so aptlydescribed in hisreport into the

Strangeway riots inthe early 1990s.

23. Crawley and Crawley (2008) see n.16.24. Sim (2007) see n.19.25. Cohen, S. (2001), States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering, Cambridge: Polity Press.26. Sparks, R. J., Bottoms, A. E. and Hay, W. (1996), Prisons and the Problem of Order, Oxford: Clarendon Press.27. Home Office (1991), Prison Disturbances April 1990: Report of an Inquiry by the Rt Hon. Lord Justice Woolf (Parts I and II), London: HMSO.


Elsewhere in the prison, a similar situation wasbeing repeated, but what was of particular note wasthe manner in which diffidence could impact on staffmorale. On one of the wings, morale was very low andworsening, as a result of one member of staff havingbeen assaulted and subsequently taken a leave ofabsence due to stress. Many staff on the wing felt thatthe management did not ‘have their back’ and thatmanagement decisions were being taken either for thebenefit of prisoners or to save money and make theSenior Management ‘look good’. They felt that theconjunction of these two policies made their positionboth more tenuous (in terms of both physical andoccupational safety) and that they were beingabandoned in their front line roleto the dangers of theenvironment. This impactednegatively on their ontologicalsecurity which compounded theirstate of diffidence. Giddens28

argues that there is a thin linebetween the security that anindividual can feel when inconstrained and predictablecircumstances and the insecuritythat can occur when thoseconstraints are absent. In asituation where the structureswhich underpin and confine anindividual’s existence is assuredthen the individual isontologically secure — they areconfident in the nature of theirreality. However, where crises andchange occur andtrustworthiness and reliability arethrown into question, peoplebecome ontologically insecure — they no longer haveconfidence in their reality. This is how the staff felt onthis wing: they had undergone a period of rapidstaffing and operational change; cutbacks meant thatthey felt that their jobs were no longer secure; and theexample of their colleague meant that they no longerfelt safe. In essence, they were ontologically insecure.Their lack of trust in their operational realitycompounded their insecure positionality (where theyperceived themselves in relation to other groups andbodies within the prison) and their sense of self as wellas their diffident state, all of which impacted on theirmorale.

This resulted in a different kind of consequencethan was noted with the previous wing. There, they had

retreated and banded in a manner that prevented thecore deliverables from being achieved. On this wing,staff had become aggressively reactive in their use ofauthority as a means of bolstering their morale andcementing their ‘in-group-status. Hobbes29 discussesthe utility of pre-emptive displays of power and violencefor diffident individuals, living within the State ofNature. It affords them a means of protection andsecurity within an uncertain environment. This is whatappeared to be occurring on this wing — any minorinfraction of the rules (by the ‘out-group’) resulted insanction, either through the formal systems of IEP andAdjudication, or more usually through informal meanswhereby prisoners would not be unlocked for

association, gym or visits orwould be purposefully deprivedof other activities and privileges.Again, this resulted in mountingfrustrations amongst the prisonerbody — who felt that they hadno means of legitimate recoursein an environment where anycomplaint resulted in furthersanction.

Elsewhere in the prison,another consequence of staffdiffidence was emerging. In the1980s, Ian Dunbar30 utilised thephrase ‘dynamic security’ todescribe the best security andintelligence gathering practicewithin the Prison Service.Fundamentally, this entails directinteraction and engagement bystaff, with prisoners, out on thewings. The purpose of thispractice is threefold: firstly, it

enables staff to get to know, through a process ofimmersion, the prisoners in their care and developrelationships with them — which can provide informalmeans for the resolution of problems and wing basedissues. This lubricates wing life and eases the burdensand frictions that can beset a wing; secondly, it acts as anintelligence mechanism whereby staff get to know therhythms, rivalries, movements and backstage practices ofthe wing, enabling them to avoid, divert or intervene inpotential hostilities. This occurs by extending, to allcorners of the inhabited spaces, what Goffman31 referredto as ‘surveillance spaces’where the authority and powerof the staff and the establishment are present; andthirdly, it moves staff away from the kind of reactionarypractices that often follow from passive forms of

Issue 211 29

. . . where crises andchange occur andtrustworthiness andreliability are thrown

into question,people becomeontologically

insecure — they nolonger have

confidence in theirreality.

28. Giddens, A. (1991), Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Lat Modern Age, London: Polity. 29. Hobbes (1651) see n.10.30. Dunbar, I (1985), A Sense of Direction, London: HMPS.31. Goffman, E (1961), Asylums, London: Penguin Books.


intelligence gathering — which, due to an over use ofimmediate power, can exacerbate the problems of whichthey have latterly become aware (see above).

On the wing in question, this dynamic security hadceased to exist. Having retreated into the wing office,staff had very little notion of what was occurring ontheir wing. This of course heightened what Sykes calledthe deprivation of security by both removing themechanism of policing (a staff presence) andexacerbating the particular pain of imprisonment thatderives from increased interaction with otherprisoners.32 The prison had an imported gang problem,in which street rivalries were imported into the prison,yet staff were unaware of which gang members wereon their wing, ending up with some high ranking gangmembers from three rival factions being located on thesame landing. This resulted in a number of attacks andretaliatory strikes, involving various forms of weaponry,leading to injuries to both prisoners and staff. For thestaff on the wing, these incidents came out of the bluebut most prisoners had been aware of the mountingtensions and could have predicted the outbreak ofviolence. If the staff had been involved ‘dynamically’, inthe manner outlined here, then they too would havebeen able to see this coming and taken steps to preventit from occurring.

That is the major concern with a diffident, andthus retreated and fortified, staff. They areoperationally insecure, reactionary and unable orunwilling, to provide adequate protection to those intheir care. Any environment that generates,encourages or allows diffident staff to exist and thenallows the consequences of that staff culture tobecome toxic, is to be avoided and condemned. If thiscan occur in Prison A, a traditional designestablishment of 1000+ prisoners, how much morelikely is it that similar situations will pertain in muchlarger establishments? Even in a clustered modelprison, as has been posited by the incumbentMinister, it is probable that diffident staff and toxicpractice will occur. How would managers tackle adiffident staff, a problem in a traditional prisonlayout, in these clustered prisons where the degreeof separation between the ‘in-group’ of unit staff andthe SMT is even wider than in other prisonconstructions? As such, this objection to thisparticular punitive fetish should be added to theweight of all those others mentioned before and,once and for all, the notion of the Titan prison shouldbe buried, the dust thrown atop, and the TitanicHobgoblin exorcised from future penal discourse.

30 Issue 211

32. Sykes (1958) see n.17.


Introduction

With the largest prison in the country — HMPOakwood near Wolverhampton, run by G4S —now up and running, and plans for a new ‘super-prison’ in Wales, it seems that ‘Titan’ prisons (orsomething very close to them) are firmly back onthe agenda. Along with new accommodationplanned at HMP Parc in Bridgend, HMPPeterborough in Cambridgeshire, HMP The Mountin Hertfordshire and HMP Thameside in London,an extra 1,260 places are to be added to thecustodial estate. At the same time, 2,600 oldplaces will be lost through the closure of sixprisons and partial closure of three other sites; acapacity reduction which, it is hoped, will save £63million per year. Among the prisons to bemothballed are Shrewsbury (originally built in1793 and redesigned in the 1880s), Canterbury(1808) Gloucester (originating 1782 and rebuilt inthe 1840s) and Shepton Mallett (on whose sitethere has been a prison since 1610). It has not yetbeen revealed what these prime sites might beturned into, but one can well imagine that ifconverted into apartments with the façades keptintact, they are likely to appeal to the kind ofaffluent young professionals who stay in theboutique hotel housed in the former HMP Oxford.But is it the case that ‘old’ always means ‘bad’ inthe prison estate, and does ‘new’ necessarilymean ‘progressive’ or ‘humanitarian’?

Why is the study of prison architecture anddesign important?

Prison architecture and design are under-researched, despite longstanding implicit recognition ofthe significance of prison space, which can be tracedfrom Bentham’s 18th century idea that prisoner reformand wellbeing are achieved in part by a simple idea inarchitecture; through the mid-19th century belief, asexpressed by the Chaplain/Governor of Millbank, that

good behaviour among prisoners could be maintainedwith the passive instrument of the building itself;1 toSykes’ evocative description of the Kafka-likearchitecture and layout of New Jersey State prison inthe mid-twentieth century.2 In 1961 a special issue ofBritish Journal of Criminology was devoted to prisonarchitecture but, subsequently, criminologicalscholarship on prison design has been sparse andlargely historical, focusing on the 18th/19th century‘birth of the prison’. More recent studies introducethemes including: discourses of legitimacy and non-legitimacy security; therapy; compliance and neo-paternalism; prison size, quality of life and ‘healthy’prisons; normalization; the depth, weight and tightnessof imprisonment; the resurgence of the doctrine of lesseligibility; and the Prison Service Instruction that prisonsmust meet a public acceptability test.

However, somewhat surprisingly, these studieshave not included architecture and design as keyvariables and the most vivid descriptions of their formand effects are to be found in prisoner(auto)biographies. One of the most striking examples isLife Without Parole: Living and Dying in Prison Today,written by Victor Hassine, a ‘lifer’ in the Americansystem who committed suicide after nearly 28 yearsinside, after being denied a parole hearing. Hisobservations about the different prisons he served timein, which varied considerably in age, size and layout,tell us much about the effects that carceral design hason its occupants; in fact, Hassine states that many ofthe crises facing penal systems in the developed world— including overcrowding, violence, mental andphysical illness, drug use, high levels of suicide and self-harm — are intrinsically related to the ‘fear-suffusedenvironments’ created by prison architects:

To fully understand the prison experiencerequires a personal awareness of how bricks,mortar, steel, and the endless enforcement ofrules and regulations animate a prison into aliving, breathing entity designed tomanipulate its inhabitants… Prison designers

Issue 211 31


Prison Contraction in an Age ofExpansion:

Size Matters, but does ‘New’ equal ‘Better’ in Prison Design?Yvonne Jewkes is Professor of Criminology at the University of Leicester.

1. Nihill cited in Evans, R. (1982) The Fabrication of Virtue, English Prison Architecture, 1750-1840. Cambridge, Cambridge UniversityPress, p. 323.

2. Sykes, G. (1958) The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.


and managers have developed a precise anduniversal alphabet of fear that is carefullyassembled and arranged — bricks, steel,uniforms, colors, odors, shapes, andmanagement style — to effectively control theconduct of whole prison populations.3

More recent developments in penal architecture inthe UK can be traced back to the escapes fromWhitemoor in 1994 and Parkhurst in 1995. Theresulting Woodcock and Learmont inquiries and reportsushered in a new regime of security and control,including fortified perimeters, increased use of CCTVinternally as well as externally, strict volumetric controlof prisoners’ property and a dramatic reversal of policyon many privileges that could be presented by themedia as inappropriatelyconceived indulgences to an anti-social population. In essence,countless everyday procedures,practices and activities wereintroduced, curtailed or changedthat combined to form insidiousand pervasive erosions ofhumanity. In fact, Deborah Drakeargues that the prison is a usefulbarometer for understanding themethods and parameters of statepower and that security withinthe penal system has run parallelto it rise in prominence in a post9/11, risk-attuned and retributivesociety.4 With a growing politicaland public appetite for excessivepunishment to be inflicted on the‘worst of the worst’, Drakeobserves that the high-profile escapes that precipitatedthese measures were viewed politically as a fortuitouscatalyst for change.

This nascent preoccupation with repressivestructural and situational security as a means ofcontrolling risk coincided with the prison servicebecoming an executive agency in 1993, and a period ofnew managerialism, with performance measures forprisons and a system of incentives and earned privilegesawarded or withdrawn according to prisoners’behaviour and complicity. In addition, in the early1990s, the introduction of the Private Finance Initiative(PFI) enabled awarding of contracts for design,construction, management and finance (DCMF) ofpenal institutions and, by 2007, warehouse-style ‘Titan’prisons were being mooted as the way forward in

prison construction. In a sense, the newest prison inEngland and Wales, HMP Oakwood nearWolverhampton, represents the culmination of theseevents and processes. Designed by Pick Everard, builtby Kier and run by G4S, Oakwood is the largest prisonproject in the UK. It is also the cheapest in terms of costper prisoner. Oakwood accommodates its occupants ata cost of £13,200 per prisoner place per year, whereasthe average direct cost at Category C prisons is£21,600, and the average overall annual cost perprisoner is £31,300. Completed in June 2012, withthree main house-blocks each containing 480 cells,together with the associated ancillary buildings,accommodation is currently provided for 1620prisoners. Oakwood is situated adjacent to two existingcustodial facilities, HMP Featherstone and HMP

Brinsford YOI. It is designed andconstructed as a stand-alonefacility, but with potential toshare facilities and staff with theother prisons on the site, if theneed arises. Although holdingCategory C prisoners, Oakwoodhas been flexibly constructed sothat it can hold higher categoryinmates without expensive retro-fitting of security. The result of‘future-proofing’ Oakwood isthat it is replete with all thesecurity and controlparaphernalia one would expectto find in a dispersal prison andarguably feels over-securitised forthe inmate population it currentlyholds. As Drake observes securityin new-build prisons has risen to

a level of prominence that eclipses every otherconsideration, including what it means to be human.

An alternative approach

A prison in Norway, Halden Fengsel, highlights thedifferent approach taken to prison design in parts ofnorthern Europe, where the strategic application ofarchitectural and aesthetic principles to the design ofnew prisons encourages personal and intellectualcreativity, and even a lightness and vividness ofexperience.5 Designers have not only experimentedwith progressive and highly stylized forms of penalarchitecture but have also designed internal prisonspaces that explore more open, creative, even playfulspatial planning. An absence of hard fixtures and

32 Issue 211

3. Hassine, V. (2010). Life Without Parole: Living and Dying in Prison Today, 5th edition, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 7.4. Drake, D. (2012) Prisons, Punishment and the Pursuit of Security, Basingstoke: Palgrave.5. Hancock, P. and Jewkes, Y. (2012) ‘Penal aesthetics and the pains of imprisonment’, Punishment & Society, 13(5) 611–629.

As Drake observessecurity in new-build prisons hasrisen to a level ofprominence thateclipses every otherconsideration,including what itmeans to behuman.


furnishings, the use of psychologically effective colourschemes, attention to the maximum exploitation ofnatural light, and the incorporation of unevenness anddiffering horizons in the belief that distances, shadowsand minimization of spatial repetition ward offmonotony, are all to be found in these new prisonbuildings.6

Halden, a high security facility, is Norway’s secondlargest prison and is set on a 75 acre site in the south ofNorway, near the border with Sweden. Halden alsorepresents the first time that interior designers havebeen employed to work on a prison. According to theNorwegian government’s public construction andproperty management consultants, in each area (or‘zone’) of the prison, different colour palettes make iteasier to find one’s way around and provide a variedand pleasant atmosphere; for example, the colours inthe activity rooms are bright and energizing, while thecells are painted in more subdued, soothing shades.7

While reportedly costingapproximately the same asOakwood, Halden houses amaximum of 252 prisoners, asopposed to the 2000 capacity ofOakwood. In some senses theyhave a similar feel from theoutside and in the public visitingareas and the prisoner receptionand induction areas. Butinternally they feel very differentand as a visitor the overridingimpression of the UK prison isthat it is predominantly driven bysecurity and control imperatives(and achieving these at low cost), while in Norway thewatchword is ‘normalization’. The family house, whereprisoners can invite their partners and children to staywith them for a night and the communal living spaceswith a high-spec kitchen area separated from the TVlounge by a low-level island on which meals can beprepared, are the most obvious differences whencompared to prisons in the UK. The living ‘pods’ inHalden contain heavy, vandal-proof furniture like theirBritish counterparts, but their domestic spaces emulatethe designs considered by contemporary house-buildersto be most desirable for aspirational family living.

The cells at Halden are reminiscent of rooms instudent halls of residence with their flat-screen TVs andmini-fridges. Designers chose long vertical windows forthe rooms because they let in more sunlight. Every 10

to 12 cells share a living room and kitchen which, withtheir stainless-steel countertops, wraparound sofas andbirch-colored coffee tables, might be likened to thedisplay kitchens found in Ikea showrooms (except of ahigher quality; all the fittings in the prison are solidmaple and were made in the carpentry workshop atanother high-security facility in Norway). Design plays akey role in Halden’s rehabilitation efforts. According tothe architect, the most important thing is that theprison looks as much like the outside world as possible.To avoid an institutional feel, exteriors are not concretebut made of bricks, galvanized steel and larch; thebuildings seem to have grown organically from thewoodlands. In addition, Halden is equipped throughoutwith state-of-the-art lighting designed to imitatenatural daylight (regarded as having a positive effect oninmates’ state of mind, including the reduction ofaggression — and a commodity in relatively shortsupply during Scandinavian winters); and none of the

windows anywhere in the prisonhave bars. In the prison exerciseyards Banksy-style murals createdby Norwegian street artist, Dolk,adorn the walls.

Like Oakwood, Halden hasbeen described as a ‘showcase’prison. Both have been usedpolitically by their governmentswho have held them up assymbols of their — markedlydifferent — penal policies andphilosophies. While Oakwoodmight be considered a modelprison in a country characterized

by penal excess, Halden may be regarded as an exampleof the Nordic countries penal exceptionalism, a conceptcharacterized by low imprisonment rates, humaneprison conditions and a large number of small prisons,many housing fewer than 100 prisoners. According toPratt,8 ‘the exceptional conditions in most Scandinavianprisons, while not eliminating the pains ofimprisonment, must surely ease them’, while aspokesperson for the Norwegian Ministry of Justice hasstated that what matters most for prisoners and staff inNorwegian prisons is to be seen, heard and respectedas human beings.9 In the Nordic countries, where therehas not been the same marked shift of emphasis fromthe welfare model to the punitive, populist penalmodel, prisoners are referred to as ‘clients’ and prisonofficers as ‘prison carers’ or ‘treatment staff’. Of course,

Issue 211 33

6. Spens, I. (1994) Architecture of Incarceration, London: Academy Editions.7. http://www.statsbygg.no8. Pratt J. (2008) ‘Scandinavian exceptionalism in an era of penal excess. Part 1: the nature and roots of Scandinavian exceptionalism’,

British Journal of Criminology, 48(2): 119-137, p. 124.9. cited in Johnsen, B., Granheim, P. K. and Helgesen, J. (2011) ‘Exceptional prison conditions and the quality of prison life: Prison size

and prison culture in Norwegian closed prisons’, European Journal of Criminology, 8(6): 515-529.

According to thearchitect, the mostimportant thing isthat the prison

looks as much likethe outside world as

possible.


there are huge differences in crime and imprisonmentrates in each country and prisons in many Scandinaviancountries are very unlikely to become overcrowded,with all the problems that gives rise to, because whenprisons are full, convicted offenders simply join a prisonwaiting list. These differences arguably reflect a broaderdiscourse and moral relationship to groups oftenconstructed and treated as ‘outsiders’. There is moreroutine interaction and less social distance betweenofficers and prisoners in Norway than in the UK. Thesedifferences in culture are reflected in the training theofficers receive as well as the structure of their workingenvironment. In England and Wales the basic prisonofficer training is eight weeks with a focus onprofessional attitudes, interpersonal skills, security,control and restraint techniques, managing prisonersand professional standards,searching, diversity, andunderstanding prisoners’behaviour, including suicide andself-harm, substance misuse andmental health.10 In Norway,prison officer training is a two-year university accredited degree.

Halden is proud to be called‘the world’s most humane prison’,and the Governor is quoted inTime magazine (10 May 2010) assaying ‘In the Norwegian prisonsystem, there’s a focus on human rights and respect’.11

The same article notes:

[Halden] embodies the guiding principlesof the country’s penal system: that repressiveprisons do not work and that treatingprisoners humanely boosts their chances ofreintegrating into society. ‘When they arrive,many of them are in bad shape’, [Governor]Hoidal says, noting that Halden houses drugdealers, murderers and rapists, among others:‘We want to build them up, give themconfidence through education and work andhave them leave as better people’.12

Underlining the importance of staff-prisonerrelations that can be facilitated in a prison like Halden,its Governor also says:

Halden’s greatest asset, though, may bethe strong relationship between staff andinmates. Prison guards… routinely eat mealsand play sports with the inmates. ‘Many ofthe prisoners come from bad homes, so wewanted to create a sense of family,’ saysarchitect Per Hojgaard Nielsen. Half theguards are women — Hoidal believes thisdecreases aggression — and prisoners receivequestionnaires asking how their experience inprison can be improved. There’s plenty ofenthusiasm for transforming lives. ‘None of uswere forced to work here. We chose to…Ourgoal is to give all the prisoners…a meaningfullife inside these walls.’ It’s warmth likethat, not the expensive TV sets, that will likely

have the most lastingimpact.13

Once again, this is partiallydetermined by size of prison.Liebling and Arnold14 in the UKand Johnsen et al15 in Norwayhave found that the humanisticvalues central to the prisonexperience and to forgingpositive prisoner-staffrelationships are respect,humanity, trust and support and

that these are greatly enhanced in small prisonenvironments and significantly undermined in largeestablishments. Research on morale, leadership, safetyand quality of prison life all also indicate that ‘small isbetter’. Ian O’Donnell has further argued:

[G]enerally speaking prisons work better ifthey are small…large prisons need to behighly regimented and life within them has anassembly line quality. Individual needs canquickly become lost in the drive to meetinstitutional priorities. These aredehumanising places where security andorder are difficult to maintain, vulnerableprisoners become isolated, and the slimchance of reform is further attenuated. Tominimise the harms of confinement prisonsmust be modest in size.16

34 Issue 211

10. Arnold, H., Liebling, A. and Tait, S. (2007) ‘Prison Officers and Prison Culture’, in Y. Jewkes (ed.) Handbook on Prisons, Cullompton:Willan, pp. 471-495.

11. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00.html12. Ibid.13. Ibid.14. Liebling, A., assisted by Arnold, H. (2004a). Prisons and their moral performance: A study of values, quality and prison life. New York:

Oxford University Press.15. Johnsen et al (2011) see n.9.16. O’Donnell, I. (2005) ‘Putting Prison in its Place’, Address to the Annual Conference of the Irish Association for the Study of

Delinquency, 5 November, p. 65. Available http://www.iprt.ie/files/putting_prison_in_its_place__ian_odonnell_nov_2005.pdf

Research on morale,leadership, safetyand quality of

prison life all alsoindicate that ‘small

is better’.


Of course the rationale for building giant prisons iscost-effectiveness and efficiency, but this seems a veryshort-term view based on what we know aboutrecidivism. All countries must decide what is a suitableamount of pain to inflict on individuals defined inrelation to cultural discourses — and, putting it crudely,those discourses are dominated by themes ofvengeance and punitive punishment in the US and UK,and of welfare, citizenship and rehabilitation in Norway.

Looking to the future

A new ESRC-funded research study is plannedwhich will address these issues.17 With DominiqueMoran (University ofBirmingham) I will explorewhether it is the case that aprison is a prison is a prison,regardless of the way it isdesigned. Is the loss of libertyeverything? Or, if we think ofprisons as punishment, not forfurther punishment, might westand a better chance ofreturning prisoners to society asreasonably well-adjusted,rehabilitated citizens and thusreducing future prisonpopulation numbers if we followelements of the Nordic model?Imagine that in some Utopianparallel universe we could startbuilding small, aesthetically pleasing and spirituallynourishing prisons at low cost. Would they aidrehabilitation? Are open, colourful, flexible spaces likethose at Halden in some senses ‘liberating’? Or do goodintentions in architecture, design and technologysometimes have unintended outcomes or perverseconsequences?

Certainly ‘new’ does not necessarily mean ‘better’and the designers behind the new ‘super-prison’ beingplanned for construction in Wrexham, north Wales(starting mid-2014 and due to open in 2017) might becautioned that size does matter in prison construction.According to an artist’s impression published on theBBC website, HMP Wrexham will continue the designmodel found in recent prison construction in Englandand Wales; a bland but functional approach which callsto mind Victor Hassine’s words about Graterford StatePrison, Pennsylvania, built in 1920s:

There are no trees in the great walled fortressof Graterford and very few shrubs. In fact,

there isn’t much of anything green that hasn’tbeen painted green. Also, the prison has beendesigned so that you can never get anunobstructed view of anything. Walls keepgetting in the way.

But he also describes his time in a prison built inthe 1990s which, on the face of it, would appear tolend weight to the Ministry of Justice’s view that new,cost effective, modern facilities are the way forward:

Albion was an ocean of plush green fields ofgrass with handsome geometric outcroppingsof earth-toned brick buildings of various

shapes and sizes. Thebuildings were generouslyspaced so that the deepgreen of the grass, theproportionate lines of thebuildings, and thesurrounding cerulean blue ofthe sky combined to createan eye-pleasing andharmonious vision oftranquility that evoked safetyand relaxation. All ofAlbion’s buildings areclimate-controlled, well-lit,spotlessly clean, and colorcoordinated. There aresecurity cameras everywhereand blind spots nowhere.

There are eight separate housing units of only128 cells each, three separate dining halls,and two huge recreation yards…Albion is themost comfortable, best designed, moststructured, and most attractive prison that Ihave ever lived in. It looks and feels like it canactually work as a rehabilitative prison.18

However, he goes on to dispel the notion that aprison such as Albion promotes quality of life and has arehabilitative function:

In fact it is the least effective prison of all. It isa dysfunctional, mean-spirited facility thatcallously steeps you in despair while it lavishesyou with physical comfort. Albion providesthe inmate a sterile environment with facelessbells and voices precisely controlling time andmovement for no apparent purpose otherthan order. It is a place where everyone issuspicious of each other and superficial

Issue 211 35

17. ESRC Standard Grant ES/K011081/1: ‘Fear-suffused environments or potential to rehabilitate? Prison architecture, design andtechnology and the lived experience of carceral spaces’, www.prisonspaces.com

18. Hassine (2010) see n.3 p. 125.

With DominiqueMoran (University ofBirmingham) I willexplore whether it isthe case that a

prison is a prison isa prison, regardlessof the way it isdesigned.


friendliness is all that can exist. It is a placewhere perception is the only reality thatmatters and where induced poverty is used togenerate illusory wealth.

Hassine’s descriptions of Albion’s sterile,warehouse-style environment accommodating aninmate population of 2,300 men, might also beregarded as a cautionary tale for those who commissionand design future prisons in the UK. Clean, humaneand safe environments are unquestionably desirable forprisoners and prison staff and factors such as naturaldaylight, aesthetic stimuli and comfort are clear indicesof quality of life. But at Albion (and perhaps at Halden),the illusory, progressively modern architecture made the‘hard and gritty daily grind of prison outwardly appearnatural and even benign’.19 Hassine compares themanufactured effect of this environment to that of anant farm:

The visible order, regularity, and routine of theseemingly content ant farm fails to expose theviolence and crushing hopelessness thetrapped ants are actually forced to endure.Albion is …paradoxically more hopeless andindifferent than any prison that had everhoused me.

Another consequence of Albion’s combination ofwarehousing and controlled movement is sharplylimited inmate social interaction which produces adominance of self-interest over social integration. Asmore media technologies are introduced into prisonslike Oakwood and Wrexham, including in-cell phones,TVs, play stations and video links to courtrooms, feweropportunities for human interaction become available.As we know from research, criminal activity issometimes the result of poor socialisation skills, and thiscan be exacerbated by tuning in to personal media and‘tuning out’ of the prison culture, with vulnerable orfragile inmates becoming entirely invisible and unheard,and all prisoners losing out on the benefits ofassociation.20

Concluding thoughts

A wide-ranging, public discussion about thepurposes and impacts of penal architecture is longoverdue. Proposals for the building of Titan prisonsappeared to initiate such a debate. However,following Lord Carter’s recommendations and aconsultation document published in June 2008,dissenting voices claiming that Titans would bemonolithic prison warehouses meant that the planswere shelved. Instead, an approach was promised thatwould offer small units within a shared secureperimeter. But now the powers-that-be appear tohave returned to the ‘bigger is better’ approach,seduced by the economies of scale which havedrastically reduced the cost of imprisoning offendersat prisons like Oakwood. But has the market societyforgotten the transformative power of aesthetics in itsdesire for consumption and profit?

In most countries rethinking prison design is lowdown on the penal agenda and frequently clasheswith public ideas about what prisons should be like, orbecomes politically embarrassing to ministers trying toprove their ‘tough on crime’ credentials. One of thefew scholars to write about prison design, Iona Spenspointed out nearly two decades ago that unattractiveprisons cost just as much to build as ones designedwith a view to aesthetic appeal. She observed thatmore dignified accommodation in an environmentwhich facilities movement, interaction andbehavioural change is evidently more conducive torehabilitation and, ultimately, reintegration intosociety. Prisons, she said, need to be more thanhuman filing cabinets. But now that the UK isfollowing the American model prisons that are cheapto build and effective at keeping prisoners inside themare understandably attractive to the Ministry ofJustice, one has to wonder if there are other costs,human costs, attached to the new model prisons. TheMOJ promised the delivery of rehabilitation in the newprisons. Is this an achievable goal in buildings thatresemble vast, sterile ant colonies?

36 Issue 211

19. Ibid.20. Jewkes, Y. (2002) Captive Audience: Media, Masculinity and Power in Prisons, Cullompton: Willan.


Introduction

There is an extensive international literature onsocialization into prison culture.2 However, thetopic has not been systematically examined inDenmark in recent decades despite prisonconditions having changed significantly: longersentences, a higher proportion of foreign nationalprisoners, more drugs in prison and more gangmembers3 in prison society. This study seeks toshed light on prison culture in a Danish maximumsecurity prison between 2007-2009 asking (1) inwhat ways are prisoners socialized into prisonculture and (2) in what ways does prison cultureaffect the individual prisoner?

Theoretical approach

Based on his research in a US maximum securityprison, the late American sociologist Donald Clemmerdeveloped the concept of prisonization, which hedefined as:

‘The taking on in greater or less degree of thefolkways, mores, customs, and general culture of thepenitentiary.’4

By ‘Culture’, Clemmer meant artefacts, norms,language, attitudes toward staff as well as acts andrelationships among prisoners. The process ofprisonization therefore implied acquisition by eachprisoner of a new view of themselves, their fellowinmates, the prison system and wider society. The

process of prisonization resulted in an oppositionalattitude towards the prison and its representatives —the staff. However, Clemmer was mainly concernedwith the process of induction and paid little attention tothe changes that inmates may exhibit as they approachthe time of release.

Twenty years later Stanton Wheeler re-examinedClemmer’s concept of prisonization and provided anempirical test of the process. Wheeler found thatprisoners’ conformity to conventional norms covered animportant aspect of prisonization. He used hypotheticalconflict situations to develop an index of conformity tostaff role-expectations. These vignettes were presentedin a questionnaire which was distributed among 259inmates between 16 and 30 years of age. He alsoclassified inmates into phases or stages of theirsentence and then examined whether conformity tostaff role-expectations changed during time spent inprison. Wheeler found two processes in operation.When inmates were classified either by length of timeserved or by stage of sentence he found a steadyincrease in the proportion who had low levels ofconformity to staff norms. The second processappeared to be a differential attachment to the valuesof the broader society: a u-shaped distribution of ‘highconformity’ responses. The trends suggested thatinmates who were soon to return to the communitywere more frequently oriented to conventional values.Inmates conformed least to conventional standardsduring the middle phase of their sentence.5 Later,Wheeler conducted a similar study in the Scandinavian

Issue 211 37

A Study of Prisonization amongDanish Prisoners1

Dr Linda Kjaer Minke, Assistant Professor at University of Southern Denmark, Institute of Law.

1. I am most grateful for usefull comments from anonymous referees and I am also grateful to Mary Munro for her comments on earlierdrafts.

2. E.G. Bondeson, U. (1968), Argot Knowledge as an Indicator of Criminal socialization in Scandinavian Studies in Criminology, Vol. 2, pp.73-105; Crewe, B. (2009) Prisoner Society, Oxford University Press, UK; Galtung, J. (1959), Fengselssamfunnet – et forsøk på analyse[Prisoner society – an attempt to analysis], Universitetsforlaget, Oslo; Gillespie, W. (2003) Prisonization, LFB Scholary Publishing LLC,USA; Grapendaal, M. (1990) The Inmate Subcultures in Dutch Prisons in British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 341-357;Harvey, J. (2007), Young Men in Prison – Surviving and Adapting to the Life Inside, Willan Publishing, UK; Hayner, N. & Ash, E. (1939)The Prisoner Community as a Social Group in American Sociological Review, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 362-369; Irwin, J. and Cressey, D. (1962)Thieves, Convicts and the Inmate Culture in Social Problems, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 142-155; Mathiesen, T. (1965) The Defences of theWeak, Tavistock Publications, UK; McCorkle, L. & Korn, R. (1954) Resocialization within the Walls in The Annals of the AmericanAcademy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 293, No. 1, pp. 88-98; Ramirez, J. (1984) Prisonization, staff and inmates – Is it reallyabout Us versus Them? in Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol. 11, No. 4. pp. 423-460; Sykes, G. (1958) The Society of Captives,Princeton University Press, USA; Thomas, C., Petersen, D., and Zingraff, R. (1978) Structural and Social Psychological Correlates ofPrisonization in Criminology, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 383-394; Ugelvik, T. (2011), Fangenes friheter: makt og motstand i et norsk fengsel[Prisoners liberties: power and resistance in a Norwegian Prison], Universitetsforlaget, Oslo; Wheeler, S. (1961b) Role Conflict inCorrectional Communities in Cressey, D. (Ed.) The Prison: Studies in Institutional Organization and Change. Holt, Rinehart and Winston,Inc., New York.

3. In Denmark, gang members and outlaw bikers are defined and registered as such by the police. When an official gang member serveshis sentence, he does so in a maximum secured prison in a segregated unit among similar gang members/outlaw bikers.

4. Clemmer, D. (1958 [1940]): 299 in The Prison Community, Holt, Reinhardt and Winston, New York.5. Wheeler, S. (1961a) Socialization in Correctional Communities in American Sociological Review, Vol. 26, No. 5, pp. 697-712.


countries. He found no evidence of a similar u-curveamong Scandinavian inmates.6 Neither has subsequentresearch found evidence of a u-shaped distributionbetween stage of sentence and prisonization.7

In this study prisonization is defined as:

A socialization process in the prison where theinmates in prison in varying degrees endorseoppositional norms towards the employeesand the official prison system they manageand represent.

According to this definition one may be less ormore prisonized during imprisonment but prisonizationinvolves conflicts with officialdom and oppositiontowards society.

A study of prisonization among prisoners inDenmark — method and context

This investigation of the incidence of prisonizationof prisoners in Danish prisons was conducted from2007-2009 using a mix of quantitative and qualitativemethods. The research approach is inspired byreflections about and strategies of doing ethnographicfieldwork in general and has, of course, taken theparticular setting — a prison — into account. This, forexample, means awareness of performance in prisonsociety, prison conduct, the importance of prisonregimes and rules, order and security.8

The qualitative study took place in a closed prisonwith a total of 220 prisoners.9 The prison was built in1859 to a cellular design based on the PhiladelphiaSystem. Nowadays, most prisoners are on associationduring the day. Prisoners who are not on associationare kept in solitary confinement voluntarily or becauseof disciplinary infractions. The prison consists of fourwings each of three sections ordinarily holding 20 — 22prisoners. Prisoners have association until 9.25 pm

when all inmates are locked in their cell until the nextmorning at 7 am. All cells are one-man cells. In eachsection, the prisoners have to share two showers, twotoilets, a TV room, a dining room, and a kitchen. Thereis segregation within the prison: prisoners undergoingdrug treatment serve their sentence in special units; andmembers of particular (biker) gangs serve theirsentence in another section. Six sections consist of amixed group of inmates serving sentences up to life.

As a rule, prisoners receive money to buy their ownfood in the prison shop. Prisoners have a right and aduty to occupation through work, education or otherapproved activities, during the day between eight in themorning and three in the afternoon. Prisoners receivewages for this. Due to the Danish principle ofnormalization10 all prisoners wear their own clothes andprepare their own dinner. Much leisure time among theprisoners is about planning, shopping, and preparingdinner.11 Prisoners are entitled to visits for at least onehour a week. Visits takes place in separate visit roomsand are not normally supervised by staff. Cells are aboutnine square metres and are furnished with a bed, atable, a chair, a refrigerator, and a wash hand basin.Most prisoners rent a TV and PlayStation equipmentfrom the prison authorities.

The prisoners are male, mainly over 23, havinglived in Greater Copenhagen prior to imprisonment.Most of them are serving sentences of over 5 years onconviction for drug offences, robbery, homicide andaggravated assault.

The ethnographic fieldwork in the prison lasted for13 months (or 148 days or 1090 hours), during whichthe prisoners’ everyday life, interaction patterns,relationships between the prisoners and staff and thesurrounding community were studied. I carried keys tothe prison and, except at night, I was allowed to join allsections almost any time I wanted to. During the sameperiod, I conducted structured interviews with 68prisoners of which 59 were audio-recorded. The

38 Issue 211

6. Cline, H. & Wheeler, S. (1968) The Determinants of Normative Patterns in Correctional Institutions in Scandinavian Studies inCriminology, Vol. 2, pp. 173-184.

7. Wellford conducted a quantitative survey of 120 male prisoners, which identified a weak correlation between the temporal phase ofimprisonment and prisonization: Wellford, C. (1967) Factors associated with adoption of the inmate code in Journal of Criminal Law,Criminology and Police Science, No. 58, pp. 197-203. Another U.S. study was conducted by criminologists Robert Atchley & PatrickMcCabe. Although they used exactly the same time index as Wheeler, it was not possible to retrieve the u-curve: Atchley, R. &McCabe, P. (1968) Socialization in Correctional Communities: A Replication in American Sociological Review, Vol. 33, pp. 774-785. Asurvey study conducted under the guidance of Ronald Akers found that inmates who serve in treatment-oriented sections and in lessrestrictive prison regimes are lesser prisonized compared to prisoners in »ordinary sections« and in more restrictive regimes. The studydid not support evidence of a u-curve: Akers, R., Hayner, S. and Gruninger, W. (1977) Prisonization in Five Countries in Criminology,Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 527-554.

8. Spradley, J. (1980) Participant Observation, Holt, Rineholt and Winston, USA; Crewe, B. (2006) Prison Drug Dealing and theEthnographic Lens in The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, Vol. 45, No. 4, pp. 347-368; Crewe 2009 see n.1; King, R. & Liebling, A.(2008) Doing research in prisons in King, R. and Wincup, E. [Ed.], Doing research on Crime and Justice, Oxford University Press, UK.

9. This is an average prison size compared to other closed and open prisons in Denmark.10. The principle of normalization was introduced in 1946 in a preliminary version of the Danish penal law. It states that prison conditions

as much as possible should be comparable to conditions in the surrounding community: Foreløbig Betænkning vedrørendeFuldbyrdelse af Fængselsstraf mv (1946), Afgivet af det af Justitsministeriet den 25. februar nedsatte udvalg [Preliminary Penal Law etc.(1946)]. This approach was inspired by the Swedish penal law.

11. Minke, L. (2012), Fængslets indre liv [The Prisoner Community], Jurist og Økonomforbundets forlag, København.


interviewees were selected using various criteria suchas age, ethnicity, marital status, crime, length ofimprisonment, and time served in prison. The socialstatus of prisoners was also taken into account. In somecases, it was difficult to understand the hierarchyamong the prisoners. I therefore asked an intervieweeto nominate other interviewees whom he considereddiffered most from himself. Using this selection criterionI got information about prison life which would havebeen otherwise difficult to uncover. The long period ofparticipant observation and myfrequent presence in the prisonled to a gradual build-up of trustand confidence on the part of theprisoners as well as the staff.

The quantitative study was across-sectional survey to examineif qualitative results could begeneralised across other prisonsand also to identify the mostimportant factors which mightinfluence levels of prisonization.The survey was conducted in 12correctional institutions such asremand centres, closed and openprisons and half-way houses. Aquestionnaire (in Danish and/orArabic) was distributed andcollected by hand among 1647convicted prisoners. This numberwas almost half of the overallprison population in Denmark atthat time. There were 803completed questionnaires, givingan effective response rate of 49 percent. Most non-completions were from prisoners who could not readDanish or Arabic.

Inspired by Wheeler’s early study on prisonization,12

three vignettes were devised to identify whetherprisoners expressed solidarity with staff or fellowprisoners.13 Prisoners could mark their response on a 5point Likert scale from ‘totally agree’ to ‘totallydisagree’. Prisoners with an average value of ≤ 3expressed conformity to staff role-expectations and

were categorised as ‘low prisonized’ and prisoners withan average value of > 3 expressed conformity to inmaterole-expectations and were categorised as ‘highprisonized’. Values for respectively low and highprisonization were calculated for the population (N =745): 56.5 percent of respondents expressed a highdegree of prisonization and 43.5 percent expressed alow degree of prisonization.

A logistic regression analysis was undertaken inorder to find out which variables had most impact on

the level of prisonization. Themodel can be defined as an‘integrated model’14 and containsinformation about prisoners’gender, age, ethnicity, maritalstatus, children, educational level,employment, religious belief,number of prior sentences,conviction charge, whether theconviction charge was committedin association, type of prison,type of section in prison, stage ofsentence15 and visits fromoutside.

The starting point of theanalysis was the calculation ofregression equations for allindependent variables. By using abackwards search strategy it ispossible to determine whichindependent variables contributesignificantly (p<0.05) to theprediction of degree ofprisonization.

But the question is how the process ofprisonization is initiated? The ethnographic fieldworkdiscussed below helps to understand this process.

The initiation of prisonization and introductionto prison codes of conduct

Prior to transfer to a closed prison, severalprisoners reported that they were anxious about beingassaulted or exploited by other prisoners. For that

Issue 211 39

12. Wheeler 1961a see n.4.13. The vignettes were (1) An inmate commits a minor rule infraction and is reported by a prison officer. Two prisoners discuss the

incident. One of them criticizes the prison officer. The other claims that the prison officer usually is fair, and he was only doing his duty.What do you think about the inmate defending the prison officer? (2) The two inmates Thomas and Michael are friends. Thomas hassmuggled a mobile phone into prison but now thinks that prison officers suspect him of having a mobile. He asks Michael to keep itfor him a few days. Michael accepts and hides the mobile phone for Thomas. What do you think about Michael hiding the mobilephone for Thomas? (3) Two inmates have planned an escape from prison. The only way it is possible is if their fellow prisoner, Soren,smuggles tool from work. Soren agrees to do the smuggling. What do you think about Soren smuggling tools for the two inmates?

14. In the early study of prison culture it was assumed that prison culture was formed and found in the prison itself. This hypothesisfounded the so called deprivation model (e.g. Sykes 1958 see n.1). Irwin and Cressey founded a second model – the so calledimportation model – which explained prison culture as a result of a subcultural and normative behavior pattern prisoners bring into theprison and reproduces in there (Irwin and Cressey 1962 see n.1). Thomas et al. (1978 see n.1) suggested a third model whichintegrated the above-mentioned two models and named this the integration model.

15. Early phase of sentence includes those who have served less than six months; middle phase is those who have served more than sixmonths and have more than six months left to serve; and late phase is those who have less than six months remaining to serve.

The quantitativestudy was a cross-sectional survey to

examine ifqualitative results

could begeneralised acrossother prisons andalso to identify themost important

factors which mightinfluence levels ofprisonization.


reason, most newcomers were wary and felt insecureabout the prospect of imprisonment. A prisonerexplained: ‘The first day in this prison, I stayed in mycell behind a closed door and I hoped that no-onewould come in.’ Similarly, several prisoners said thatthey were mentally prepared for the worst casescenario such as being assaulted, raped or robbed.With limited prior knowledge about prison life someprisoners asked the staff questions but: ‘The guardsdon’t tell you much (…) But the other prisoners tellyou a lot about how prison is.’ Because of prisonerturnover, poor communication skills or maybe limitedknowledge about prison conditions, some prisonersforgot to pass important (informal) information tonew prisoners. To ensure a less haphazardintroduction, prisoners themselves had devised aproper induction process,named the ’Spokesmanintroduction’16 (in Danish:’Talsmandsvisitationen’) asfollows:

‘1) Introduce yourself andwelcome the newcomer. 2) Toensure the newcomer canbecome accostomed as quickly aspossible to prison life, review thedifferent forms used by theprison authorities such asapplications for visits, for makingtelephone calls, vouchers for theshop. 3) General introduction tothe section, the routines anddaily life e.g. for exampledishwashing system. 4) Make aguided tour of the section. 5)Make sure the newcomer shows you his criminal record(for the sake of the newcomer, because we don’t wantpeople to get into trouble because of the crime forwhich they were convicted).’

Some of these points merit further explanation.Point 2 ‘vouchers for the shop’ is to make sure that theprisoner can get groceries from the prison shop. At agiven time once a week, prisoners in one section mayshop for food but if a prisoner is unable to do hisshopping at this particular time or has forgottensomething he can give another prisoner a mandate toshop on his behalf. This mandate has to be completedin advance and is therefore important to know about.Point 3 ‘dishwashing system’ differs from one section toanother. In some sections, prisoners employs a fellowinmate as dishwasher and then each prisoner has to

pay an amount from his salary to him. It might be thatthe newcomer can apply for the dishwashing job. It istherefore seen as important to know about thispractical issue. Point 5 to ‘show the criminal record’ isjustified because prisoners do not want to serve theirsentence in the same section as ‘grasses’ or inmatesconvicted for sexual crimes. If a newcomer refuses toshow his criminal record — or if he has a problematiccriminal record — he is usually asked by the fellowinmates to be transferred to another section or even toanother prison. A prisoner explained: ‘If you don’t havea proper criminal record, then it’s goodbye.’ If aprisoner is transferred to another section or anotherprison for not having a proper record, it is almostimpossible to be included in another prison. Rumoursabout the prisoner often arrive before the prisoner

himself. In several cases, anexcluded prisoner therefore hasto serve his sentence in a‘voluntary’ isolation section withall the limitations this kind ofsentence entails.

Another informal part of theintroduction relates to the mostimportant aspect of the prisoncode of conduct. This may besummarised briefly as: ‘Don’tsteal from fellow prisoners, don’tgrass, and don’t interact with theguards.’ Depending on howserious rule breaking behaviour isperceived by others, the prisoneris met with a range of informalreactions: verbal reprimanded,being ‘voted out’ of the section,

or in some cases being physically punished. When aprisoner is voted out, he has to move section or evenprison. Fellow inmates claim to the prison authoritiesthat they cannot guarantee his safety and then,because of the need to maintain order and security, theprison authorities have to transfer the prisoner whetherhe accepts it or not. The excluded prisoner runs a highrisk of becoming a ‘ghost’ in the prison society. He istransferred from one place to the other leaving behindnothing but a bad name and a vague impression.

To examine how common the rule of conduct ‘notto interact with the prison guard’ was amongstprisoners, they were asked how often they talkedvoluntarily with prison guards or other professional formore than ten minutes. 53 percent (N = 766) of theprisoners had rarely (once a month or less) talked with

40 Issue 211

To ensure a lesshaphazardintroduction,

prisoners themselveshad devised a properinduction process,

named the’Spokesman

introduction’ . . .

16. According to the Danish penal law section 34 prisoners should be able to influence their lives in the institution through electedspokesmen. In every section prisoners have possibility to elect a prisoner as a representative (spokesman) for the prisoners in eachsection. Normally the spokesmen from the different sections in the prison hold a meeting once a week and discuss different aspects ofprison life. Among the spokesmen one of them is chosen as a »common spokesman«. This person is supposed to hold a monthlymeeting with the prison authorities. During this meeting he is given authorization to speak on behalf of most prisoners in the prison.


prison guards for more than ten minutes. It is strikingthat, at the same time, 39 percent of the prisoners (N =753) requested more social contact with the prisonguards.

Emotional brutalization as an possible aspectof prisonization

‘Don’t grass’ means not divulging anything toprison officers about what takes place among fellowinmates. A prisoner also has to be careful not to listenor even to see too much of what takes place in prison.The ideal prisoner is described as like the three wisemonkeys — eyes, ears and mouth closed — minding hisown business. In many cases, this must be taken quiteliterally. One prisoner had observed a group of fellowinmates who had Gaffa taped a youngster andthreatened to rape him to ‘scare him straight’. Theyoungster wet himself with fear while the otherprisoners stood laughing around him. A prisonerobserving this scenario felt bad emotionally about theincident but he could not talk about it even to hisfamily, in case they would make them very worried. Ifhe had told staff about the incident, he would havebeen regarded as a snitch. During my time doingparticipant observation in prison, I noticed a prisonerwith a broken nose, prisoners with broken teeth andbruises on prisoners’ backs or faces because ofpunches. However, according to official prison statistics,only three prisoners are assaulted by fellow inmates ayear. When I asked a prisoner about the number ofincidents reported he laughed and responded it was atrue sign that prisoners complied to the rule ‘not tograss’. If the prison system becomes aware of incidentsamong inmates which are perceived to be an order andsafety risk, prisoners can be roughly strip searched, cellsmight be turned upside down for security purposes,and groups of prisoners might be isolated andtransferred to other prisons. These forms for collectivepunishment have the consequence that prisoners keeptheir knowledge to themselves.

Because of their experiences during imprisonment,some prisoners said that they experienced a kind ofemotional brutalization or hardening during theirimprisonment. At the beginning of imprisonment, theyreacted more emotionally to assaults or injusticestowards themselves or fellow mates. As time went by,they reacted less. For that reason some prisoners foundit difficult to see themselves through the eyes of, andalso to relate to, people from the outside: ‘I cannot livein two worlds. If I do, I lose my strength and get weak.If I get weak, I will get attacked.’ The daily life in prisonwas seen as a struggle and the prisoner had to bepsychologically alert and physically strong. He neededto keep in good shape physically to protect himselffrom other prisoners and was constantly on the alert

for the worst case scenario. External contact and lifebeyond the prison walls was experienced as a parallelsociety, which the prisoner — for as long as he wasimprisoned — did not have the resources to get tooinvolved with. As a prisoner expressed it: ‘I don’t needfriends from outside anymore. My life is so much aboutprison life. If I have visits from people outside, I don’tknow what to talk about.’ Several prisoners reportedsimilarly that as time went by they divorced themselvesfrom social contact with people from the outside andfocussed their concentration on life behind bars.

Final model equating to high orlow prisonization

The logistic regression model equating to levels ofprisonization had five variables left in the final model: 1)gender 2) age 3) conviction charge 4) prior sentencesand 5) stage of sentence.

The analysis shows that male prisoners had ahigher probability of being highly prisonized comparedto women, and prisoners up to 29 years old had ahigher probability of being highly prisonized comparedto older prisoners. Prisoners with more than five

Issue 211 41

Table 1: Final model if term removed (N547)

95%C.I. Exp. BVariable Sig. Exp. B Lower Upper

GenderMale ,063 ,206 ,039 1,091

Age15-23 ,000 1,00024-29 ,625 ,846 ,433 1,65430-39 ,045 ,536 ,291 ,987+40 ,000 ,185 ,095 ,359

Conviction chargeDrug offence ,010 1,000Robbery ,069 ,476 ,214 1,060Aggravated assault ,596 ,860 ,493 1,501Homicide ,003 ,425 ,240 ,753Sexual offence ,014 ,213 ,062 ,728Other offence ,071 ,492 ,228 1,063

Prior sentences0 ,000 1,0001-5 ,030 1,616 1,049 2,491> 5 ,000 3,015 1,745 5,208

Stage of sentenceEarly ,005 1,000Middle ,002 2,109 1,312 3,390Late ,032 2,412 1,081 5,384


previous prison sentences were three times as likely tobe highly prisonized as inmates being incarcerated forthe first time. Prisoners who had committed drugoffences had higher probability of being highlyprisonized compared to prisoners who had committedsexual offences and those in the early stage of theirsentence (less than 6 month spent in prison) were lesslikely to be highly prisonized compared to prisonerswho had been imprisoned for a longer time. There wereno statistical difference between middle and late stageof sentence which indicated no decline in level ofprisonization as the time of release approached.17 Inother words, the study did not find a u-shapeddistribution of prison conformity responses.

Discussion

This study found that prisoners in Danish prisonsare socialized to a prison culture which emphasizes aconflicting attitude about officialdom and society. Itappears that the actual time the prisoner has spent inprison is significant in determining the level ofprisonization. Taking other variables into account theanalysis reveals that prisoners who spent more than sixmonths in prison are more likely to be highly prisonizedthan inmates who have spent less than six months. Noindication was found that prisonization decreases at thetime of release. Furthermore, it did not matter which

kind of prison regime — open or closed — theimprisonment took place in.

This study also found that prisoners are likely toundergo an emotional brutalization duringimprisonment because of the power of the inmatecode, which obliges them to keep quiet about incidentsof assault and exploitation amongst prisoners. Onereason for this norm is the knowledge that prisonauthorities will adopt a tougher regime and usecollective punishment for security purposes if prisonerstell them about such incidents. Prisoners therefore keeptheir knowledge and experiences among themselves,which may result in a greater risk of separation fromthe wider values of Danish society and also may result ina higher likelihood of recidivism. The study also showedthat prisoners are in fact willing to discuss incidentswith staff if this does not have negative consequencesfor others or could impact negatively on the prisoncommunity in terms of higher levels of security, isolationand segregation. The asymmetrical power relationsbetween prisoners and staff, and the norms of conductamong the prisoners, inhibit speaking out openly aboutproblems and concerns about prison society.

This study suggests that the distinctive norms ofDanish prisoner culture contribute to an individual andgroup identity that is in conflict with the institution andwider social values. This is likely to inhibit re-integrationon release and the process of desistance.

42 Issue 211

17. Wheeler found a decline in level for prisonization as time for release approached. The distribution was shaped as a u-curve (Wheeler1961b:706 see n.1). In his later study of prisonization in Scandinavia he didn’t find a similar u-curve (Cline & Wheeler 1968 see n.5).


Introduction

Mental illness and distress in prison has beenwell documented. Indeed research and reportshave argued that the number of mentaldisorders among prisoners is much higher thanin the general population.1 Furthermore, specificevidence linking the prevalence of mental illhealth to specific sentences of imprisonment,such as indeterminate sentences for publicprotection (IPP),2 open the debate on how bestto manage this area of contemporarypunishments. The deleterious effects of prisonlife on mental well-being are, and continue to be,a pressing matter for prison authorities and thestaff engaged in the support and treatment ofremand and sentenced prisoners. Mental illnessin prison is nothing new; rather the existence ofwhat was once termed as ‘lunacy’ and psychiatricsymptoms among those detained can be tracedto the rise of the early modern prison and theconfinement era of the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries.3 In Britain and elsewhere,as the nineteenth century progressed, societywitnessed a ‘separating out’ of criminals,psychiatric patients and those deemed as‘criminal lunatics’, with purpose built institutionspervading urban and rural areas of the country.However, these developments in confinementdid not necessarily mean that mental illness ordistress was eradicated from the prison setting,on the contrary; rather this situation issomething that continues to be topical in thecontemporary era of offender management.

Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice Process

Over recent decades, the development ofspecialist schemes and practitioners has given rise toenhancing opportunities to address mental illness atvarious points of the criminal justice process.Diversion schemes, mental health liaison practitionersand in-reach services have become an ever-growingpart of the pre-punishment and punishment stagesof the process. The twenty-first century has beenmarked by a growth in the convergence of criminaljustice and psychiatric policy, practice and legislation4

something intended to improve the wellbeing ofthose subject to criminal proceedings. Despite someradical and innovative systems being instituted acrosscriminal justice and health services, concern remainsover how best to tackle what has been seen as agrowth of psychiatric disturbances among thosesubject to criminal justice sanctions.

Several reports released in the first decade of thetwenty-first century have attempted to judge theextent of the challenges that the criminal justicesystem faces. INQUEST’s Dying on the Inside,5 thePrison Reform Trust’s Too Little Too Late6 and The LordBradley Report7 are just some of the more recentexplorations of responses to mental vulnerabilitywithin the criminal justice system. Whilst reports suchas Lord Bradley’s have undertaken a broad-reachinganalysis, many campaigning group’s evaluations,official inquiries and academic scholarship havefocused upon the prison as the key territory forreform. Indeed, self-inflicted deaths in custody havereceived significant attention.

Issue 211 43

Sentencing Reform and PrisonerMental Health

Dr Paul Taylor is Lecturer in Criminology at University of Chester. Siân Williams is a RegisteredMental Health Nurse, Nurse Specialist, working in the Crisis Resolution Team at Cheshire and

Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

1. Fazel, S. &Danesh, J. (2002) Serious mental disorder in 23,000 prisoners: a systematic review of 62 surveys. Lancet, 359, 545–550.2. Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health [The] (2008) In the Dark: The Mental Health Implications of Imprisonment for Public Protection,

[available from]: http://www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/criminal_justice/sentencing.aspx3 Seddon, T. (2007) Punishment and Madness, London, UK: Routledge.4. Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health [The] (2010) Blurring the Boundaries: The Convergence of Mental Health and Criminal Justice

Policy, Legislation, Systems and Practice, [available from]: www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/pdfs/blurring_the_boundaries.pdf5. INQUEST (2008) Dying on the Inside: Examining Women’s Deaths in Prison, [available from]:

http://inquest.gn.apc.org/website/publications/dying-on-the-inside6. Prison Reform Trust [The] (2009) Too Little Too Late: An Independent Review of Unmet Mental Health Need in Prison, [available

from]: http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Publications/vw/1/ItemID/957. Bradley, Rt Hon Lord Keith (2009) Lord Bradley’s Review of People with Mental Health Problems or Learning Disabilities in the

Criminal Justice System, [available from]:http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_098694


The problems that present themselves may wellbe grounded in the ideologically opposed custodialsetting whereby care and therapy are administeredagainst a backcloth of punishment and control.Research has shown and concluded that it ischallenging to see the therapeutic aims of custody inthe context of a high prevalence of neurotic andpsychotic disorders, substance dependency andpersonality disorders.8 As Smith9 remarks, ‘the debatearound the relationship of mental ill-health andcrime… has been well rehearsedand it is now widely recognisedthat the mentally ill should notbe in prison’. Such sentimentsare echoed by Lord Bradley,indicating that individualssuffering with mental ill-healthcould be diverted more often,and that for those who enterprison, support arrangementscould be drastically improved.Clearly addressing the issuesraised across a variety of reportsis not a simple task. Indeed themechanisms that drive currentsystems and are the basis forreform in this area are complex(such as the sentencingpractices of the courts).Moreover, in a contemporaryaustere climate coupled with anextensive use of imprisonment,surpassing 88,000 people at theend of 2011,10 meetingexpectations in this area is achallenge for officials, policy writers/makers andpractitioners alike.

Prison Life and Mental Ill-Health

Dhami, Ayton and Loewenstein11 present atheoretical interpretation of adaptation to prison lifethat prisoners make. They detail an indigenous andimportation approach to understanding patterns of

adaptation that prisoners experience. Using anindigenous approach to understanding, Dhami,Ayton and Loewenstein highlight the impact of prisonlife on the adaptations to behaviour that prisonersmake. Prison regimes, discipline and sentence lengthsall have the potential to influence behaviours and bea source of frustration, stress or have a more seriousbearing on the mental well-being of the prisoner. Theimportation approach on the other hand observeshow adaptations to the prison environment are a

reflection of pre-prison life. Insuch circumstances a prisoner’sformer background and lifestylewill impact on their ability andcapacity to adapt to prison andthus a prisoners former mentalhealth or ill-health may besignificant in this respect.

Several analyses indicatethat many people in prisonalready experience mental illnessor distress prior to being sentthere.12 Adjustment to theprison environment and regimehas also been cited as apotential catalyst to initiate orexacerbate symptoms.13 Formany, entry into the custodialenvironment is traumatic andcoping with the demands ofauthority, regimes and fellowprisoners requires a personalresilience, which for many is notachieved. Many authors havesought to explain what social

and interpersonal aspects of prison life are likely tocontribute to the mental distress and suffering of aninmate. O’Donnell and Edgar14 and Edgar15 locatevictimisation (criminal or otherwise) as a key concernfor prisoners, whilst Ireland16 draws similarconclusions in her analysis of bullying andexploitation by fellow inmates. Although it is difficultto earmark one particular dimension of prison life asthe key contributor of mental or emotional stress, it is

44 Issue 211

8. Burki, T. (2010) Grasping the nettle of mental illness in prisons, The Lancet, 376(9752), 1529-1530.9. Smith, C. (2002) Healthy prisons: a contradiction in terms? Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 39(4), 339-353. p.348.10. Ministry of Justice (2012) Offender Management Statistics Quarterly Bulletin January-March 2012: England & Wales, [available

from]: http://www.justice.gov.uk/statistics/prisons-and-probation/oms-quarterly11. Dhami, M.K., Ayton, P. &Loewenstein, G. (2007) Adaptation to imprisonment: indigenous or imported? Criminal Justice and

Behavior, 34(8), 1085-1100.12 . Prison Reform Trust [The] (2009) Too Little Too Late: An Independent Review of Unmet Mental Health Need in Prison, [available

from]: http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Publications/vw/1/ItemID/9513. Hochstetler, A.L., Murphy, D.S. & Simons, R.L. (2004) Damaged goods: exploring predictors of distress in prison inmates, Crime &

Delinquency, 50(3), 436-457.14. O’Donnell, I. & Edgar, K. (1998). Routine victimization in prison. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 375, 266-279.15. Edgar, K. (2005) Bullying, victimization and safer prisons, Probation Journal, 52(4), 390-400.16. Ireland, J. L. (2000) Bullying among prisoners: a review of research, Aggression and Violent Behavior, 5(2), 201-215.

Prison regimes,discipline and

sentence lengths allhave the potential

to influencebehaviours and be

a source offrustration, stressor have a more

serious bearing onthe mental well-being of theprisoner.


likely that any number of imposed socialarrangements can be potentially harmful to themental well-being of a prisoner.

Captured within Dhami, Ayton andLoewenstein’s indigenous approach to unveilingpatterns of adaptation are the perspectives presentedby sociologist Gresham Sykes.17 His seminal work in1958 provided an analytical lens that captured theessence of the social arrangements of the prison.Sykes contended that there were five ‘pains’ ofimprisonment felt by inmates.These amounted to a series ofdeprivations that prison life hadimposed; deprivation of liberty,deprivation of goods andservices, deprivation ofheterosexual relationships,deprivation of autonomy and adeprivation of security. Similarly,Cohen and Taylor18 illuminatedthe difficulties long-termprisoners faced in custody. Theydiscuss the ‘psychologicalsurvival’ of prisoners and thechallenges of long-termincarceration, in particular theimpact that time has on aprisoner’s mental well-being.More recent studies havedirected attention towards timebeing a great source ofsuffering19 echoing thesentiments of earlier workwhereby the ownership andcontrol of time has shifted fromthe individual to theinstitution.20,21

Research in a general prisoner population hasalready indicated a ‘patterned difference betweensuicidal and coping prisoners in their relationship toprison time’.22 For a prisoner serving an indeterminatesentence or a life sentence the relationship betweentheir sentence and time deserves special recognition.

In contrast to short-term or determinate sentencedprisoners, these prisoners may never be certain whennormal scheduling of their life will re-commence,23

thus potentially fueling anxieties and contributing todistress.

Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection(IPP) and Mental Illness

In terms of crime control and public protection,the New Labour years certainlyhad a distinct risk-minimisationcharacter to them with a rangeof policies and legislations beinggenerated during this timeaimed at managing ‘risky’populations.24 Whilstindeterminate detention haslong been somethingestablished in the application ofthe Mental Health Act (forexample, Section 37(41)) suchapproaches have been sparselyused in criminal justice untilrecently.

Of the various sentencingoptions available to judges, theIPP sentence has attracted themost critical commentary.Campaigning organisationssuch as the Howard League forPenal Reform have labelled theIPP as ‘ill-conceived’, ‘flawed’,‘Orwellian’ and ‘draconian’.25,26

Elsewhere the perceivedinjurious impact of thesesentences on the mental health

of prisoners has been evaluated.27 Their introductionunder the Criminal Justice Act (2003) and subsequenthigh usage sought to provide an answer to a growingpublic and political concern over offenders thoughtto be dangerous but whose offences existed outsideof the mandatory life sentence for murder. The IPP

Issue 211 45

17. Sykes, G. (1958). The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum-Security Prison. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.18. Cohen, S. & Taylor, L. (1972) Psychological Survival: The Experience of Long-Term Imprisonment, Middlesex, UK: Pelican.19. Medlicott, D. (2001) Surviving the Prison Place, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.20. Goffman, E. (1961) Asylums, Middlesex, UK: Pelican.21. Cohen, S. & Taylor, L. (1972).22. Medlicott, D. (1999) Surviving in the time machine: suicidal prisoners and the pains of prison time, Time and Society, 8(2-3), 211-

230. p.211.23. Cohen, S. & Taylor, L. (1972).24. See Taylor, P. (2012) Severe personality disorder in the secure estate: continuity and change, Medicine, Science and the Law, 52(3),

125-127.25. Howard League for Penal Reform [The] (2007) Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection: Prison Information Bulletin 3,

[available from]: http://www.howardleague.org/ipp/26. Howard League for Penal Reform [The] (2012) Briefing Paper Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill: Report Stage

and Third Reading in the Lords, [available from]:http://www.howardleague.org/briefings/27. Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health [The] (2008).

More recent studieshave directed

attention towardstime being a great

source ofsuffering19 echoingthe sentiments ofearlier workwhereby theownership and

control of time hasshifted from theindividual to theinstitution.


sentence has allowed the courts to impose aminimum time in prison before the offender goesbefore the Parole Board. The Parole Board must thenbe convinced that the offender no longer poses a riskto the public, however the number of offenders whohave had release denied has remained consistentlyhigh.28

It perhaps comes as no surprise that the level ofmental distress among the IPP sentenced prisonerpopulation is high. Researchcarried out by the SainsburyCentre for Mental Health in2008 indicated that more thanhalf of all IPP prisonersexperienced problems withemotional well-being and one infive IPP prisoners had previouslyreceived psychiatric treatment.The IPP sentence has beenregarded as a catalyst formental and emotional distress inprison, with authors citing thedamaging effects ofindeterminacy on a prisoner’ssense of hope and familialrelationships, refusals by ParoleBoards and denial of access tonecessary behaviourprogrammes due to mentalhealth problems.29,30,31

Predicting future offendingbehaviours is a challenging taskand critics would argue that aconcentration on minimisingrisks to the public overshadowsmore integrative/rehabilitativesystems of offendermanagement, resettlement and reparation. The highnumbers of those receiving IPP sentences who servebeyond their tariff suggests that issues exist in thewillingness of different risks to be accepted or not.Risk assessments, practitioner reports and inquisitorialParole Board processes all serve to inform a judgmentby the Parole Board to recommend or defer a releasefrom custody. Deferrals are high and statistical trends

that highlight the high numbers of prisonersremaining in custody beyond their tariff have beenapportioned to various concerns over the process.Delayed decisions by Parole Boards,32failures toprovide resources for rehabilitation schemesnecessary for IPP prisoners33 and risk-averse decisionmaking trends by Parole Boards34 have culminated inthe rights of offenders being eroded. Whenconsidering these issues in the context of a prisoner’s

own mental well-being theseanalyses can serve to provideadditional context to anexperience that will inevitablyhave the potential to invokefeelings such as aggravation,infuriation and a dispiritingespecially when coupled with areturn to the everyday stressorsof prison life.

Sentencing Reform

As the preceding discussionof the literature indicates, thelegitimacy of IPP sentencing hasbeen called into question. Suchapproaches to the control ofoffenders appear to besignificantly weighted in theinterests of public protectionrather than the individual andcollective rights of offenders. Asresearch has shown,indeterminacy of detention hasa hugely negative impact on theoutlook for prisoners and it isnot surprising that so many

experience emotional and mental distress in additionto the already burdening ‘pains’ of prison life.Difficulties are likely to be experienced by many, as inthe case of the IPP several questions can be raised;how are such prisoners to pass time when they donot know how long for, how are they to mark timewhen they have not end point and, how are they to‘do time’ when they do not know how much time

46 Issue 211

28. ‘At the end of March 2011 there were 6,550 prisoners serving an indeterminate IPP sentence. 3,500 of this group are being held incustody beyond expiry of their minimum term in custody, or tariff’ (The Howard League for Penal Reform, 2012, p.3-4).

29. Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health [The] (2008). 30. Cluley, E. (2009) Imprisonment for public protection and mental health issues, Probation Journal, 56, 73-75.31. Rutherford, M. (2009) Imprisonment for public protection: an example of ‘reverse diversion’, The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and

Psychology, 20(1), 46-55.32. Prison Reform Trust [The] (2010) Bromley Briefings Prison Factfile: July 2010, [available from]:

http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Publications/Factfile33. HM Chief Inspector of Prisons & HM Chief Inspector of Probation (2008) The Indeterminate Sentence for Public Protection: A

Thematic Review, [available from]: www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/.../joint.../hmip_ipp_thematic-rps.pdf34. Epstein, R. (2010) Imprisonment for public protection: does it serve the public interest? Criminal Law and Justice Weekly, 174, 465–

478.

Research carriedout by the

Sainsbury Centrefor Mental Healthin 2008 indicatedthat more than halfof all IPP prisoners

experiencedproblems withemotional well-being and one infive IPP prisonershad previously

received psychiatrictreatment.


they have to do? Philosophically and theoretically, theIPP sentence is a denial of traditional penal thoughtwhereby the courts, in response to the wrongdoingof the offender, hand down commensuratepunishments.35 Certainly the question that hasbegged to be answered is ‘can indeterminacy ever beunderstood as a proportional response to offendingbehaviour?’

From their legislative introduction in 2003 andtheir implementation since 2005, the lawfulness andlegitimacy of the IPP sentence (and offenderbehaviour programmes) has been called into questionand challenged officially through a case heard at theCourt of Appeal in July 2007.36 Moreover, 2008 sawthe IPP sentence subject toreform under the CriminalJustice and Immigration Act.37

The most recent and radicalamendment is taking place atthe time of writing, wherebyunder the CoalitionGovernment’s ‘intelligent’sentence reforms and therecently passed Legal Aid,Sentencing and Punishment ofOffenders Act (2012), the IPPsentence is to be repealed.

The Legal Aid, Sentencingand Punishment of OffendersAct (2012) outlines theprovision of new extended andlife sentences. Crucially, thesenew sentencing options foroffenders are determinaterather than indeterminate.However, whilst the Legal Aid, Sentencing andPunishment of Offenders Act (2012) has receivedCrown assent, many of its timetable of measures areyet to be implemented and it does not mean thatcurrent IPP sentenced prisoners are re-sentenced.

Implications for Practice

Caring for prisoners with mental health issuescarries with it an array of complex challenges and

tensions, not least in the delivery of care within anexplicit remit of control.38,39 Furthermore, services suchas NHS mental health prison in-reach teams havebeen regarded as facing a formidable challenge in thesupport of prisoners in terms of resource availability40

and the ‘complicated clinical picture’ that someprisoners present.41 Initiatives such as the AssessmentCare in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) approachhave been widely regarded as making a positivecontribution to the treatment and management ofmental illness and distress in prison custody. With itsfocus on the reduction of suicide and attemptedsuicide, the ACCT approach framework of riskmanagement and reporting has gathered momentum

since its rollout between 2005and 2007. The formalising ofconcerns for at-risk prisonersand the development of careplans to mitigate risks of self-injury or suicide has become anormative aspect of prison andoffender management. Centralto approaches such as ACCT isthat any member of staff canundertake reporting andtherefore ownership of the riskof self-injury or suicide hasbecome wider andmultidisciplinary.42 Moreover,additional positives can be felt,as at the same time, suchapproaches to working withmental health and risk incustody have the potential toenhance the skills of workers

individually, collectively and across professionaldisciplines.43

Innovations in sentencing options will have adirect (albeit not immediate) impact on the characterof mental ill-health in the prison environment. Thecharacter and nature of psychiatric symptoms ordistress that healthcare practitioners are confrontedwith is likely to change; although this does notnecessarily equate with improvement. Prisonpopulation statistics would indicate that prison

Issue 211 47

35. Prison Reform Trust [The] (2010) Unjust Deserts: Imprisonment for Public Protection, [available from]http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Publications/ItemId/44/vw/1

36. See Rutherford, M. (2009).37 . ee Wood, J. (2012) MAPPA level 3 offenders: reconviction as a measure of effectiveness, Probation Journal, 59, 111-123.38. Willmott, Y. (1997) Prison nursing: the tension between custody and care, British Journal of Nursing, 6(6), 333-336.39. Sim, J. (2002) The future of prison health care: a critical analysis, Critical Social Policy, 22(2), 300-323.40. Forrester, A., Chiu, K., Dove, S. & Parrott, J. (2010) Prison healthcare wings: psychiatry’s forgotten frontier? Criminal Behaviour and

Mental Health, 20, 51-61.41. Steel, J., Thornicroft, G., Birmingham, L., Brooker, C., Mills, A., Harity, M. & Shaw, J. (2007) Prison mental health inreach services,

British Journal of Psychiatry, 190, 373-374. p.373.42. See Shaw, J. & Turnbull, P. (2009) Suicide in custody, Psychiatry, 8(7), 265-268.43. Mullins, J. (2012) A multidisciplinary approach to mental health care for prisoners, Mental Health Practice, 15(10), 30-31.

Caring forprisoners withmental health

issues carries withit an array of

complex challengesand tensions, notleast in the deliveryof care within anexplicit remit of

control.


remains a favoured method of disposal by the courtsand as such practitioners are likely to interact withmore offenders; some of which will be spendinglonger in custody.

Whilst the IPP sentence has been rescinded, thisis not to say that its replacements will benefit themental well-being of prisoners. Indeed, the HowardLeague for Penal Reform44 has raised concern over theinclusion of automatic lifesentences for a second offenceunder the Legal Aid, Sentencingand Punishment of OffendersAct (2012). In suchcircumstances it is plausible tosuggest that whilst there wouldbe a reduction in the IPPsentenced prisoner population,the number of prisoners servinga life sentence may increase.Taking direction from existingperspectives45 in respect ofindigenous and importationapproaches to analysis ofadaptation, similar issuesremain, not least in the authorsconcluding that ‘those whospent longer in custody feltmore hopeless and were morefrequently charged withinfractions’. Furthermore, theincreased use of extended or lifesentences have an abundanceof practical implications. Whilstthere is a general ministerial andparliamentary wish to reducethe prison population overall,longer custodial sentences maymaintain conditions of prisonovercrowding. This is certainly undesirable as theimpact of overcrowded conditions invariably impactsupon conditions, staffing and regimes, conceivablyworsening the experience of prisonization,46 evokingpoor mental health among prisoners and potentiallyenflaming the prison’s crisis of legitimacy further.

The positive impact and the establishedassessment and treatment strategies alreadyemployed by prison-based and in-reach practitioners

will continue to evolve as the knowledge andunderstanding of mental ill-health in custodydevelops. It is clear that mental illness or distress inprison is likely to be the product of concurrent issues,however as we note here, sentence tariffs cannot beignored as a key contributor. In this vein, it is crucialto approach assessment and treatment that isgrounded in the context of the type and length of a

sentence. As authors haveshown, time (and how tomanage it) has an unmistakableeffect on the experience ofimprisonment (not least in termsof indeterminate or long-termsentences) and suicideprevention strategies can beenriched through anunderstanding of time in thiscontext.47 Coupled with provenobstacles (for example,problems accessing offenderbehaviour programmesdiscussed earlier in this articleand opportunities forimprovements to be made tothe mental health screening ofprisoners),48,49 these structuralhurdles must be understood andshort and long-term goal settingdeveloped with this in mind.

Whilst legislative andorganisational matters affectingprison life should be recognised,these should not be viewed inisolation. Rather, assessments ofsocial relationships maintainedby prisoners and identifying thesocial needs of prisoners can be

useful in the process of planning responses andproactively eliminating potential triggers of mentaldistress. Research has shown50 that factors such asisolation, a lack of meaningful activity, drug misuse, abreakdown of family contact, animosity betweenstaff and prisoners and bullying between prisonerscan serve as potential stressors. Interaction, then, bethat between prisoners themselves, prisoners andtheir family or between prisoners and prison staff

48 Issue 211

44. Howard League for Penal Reform [The] (2012).45. Dhami, M.K., Ayton, P. &Loewenstein, G. (2007). p.109746. According to Clemmer’s (1940) original work this is the process of the values of the prison being impressed upon the prisoner.

Clemmer, D. (1940) The Prison Community, Boston, USA: The Christopher Publishing House.47. Medlicott, D. (1999).48. Senior, J., Birmingham, L., Hartly, M.A., et al. (2012) Identification and management of prisoners with severe psychiatric illness by

specialist mental health services, Psychological Medicine, Available on CJO doi:10.1017/S0033291712002073.49. Ginn, S. (2012) Dealing with mental disorder in prisoners, British Medical Journal,345.50. Nurse, J., Woodcock, P. &Ormsby, J. (2003) Influence of environmental factors on mental health in prisons: focus group study,

British Medical Journal, 327, 480.

. . . the impact ofovercrowded

conditions invariablyimpacts upon

conditions, staffingand regimes,conceivablyworsening theexperience ofprisonization,

evoking poor mentalhealth amongprisoners and

potentially enflamingthe prison’s crisis oflegitimacy further.


could be conceived as a key assessment priority.Whilst none of these stressors could be considered asa static entity, it is plausible to suggest that long-termsentences may aggravate or prolong these stressors,thus affecting the mental health of prisonersadversely.

Conclusions

The abolition of IPP sentences and theintroduction of alternatives for dangerous offendersunder recent legislation herald an opportunity toexplore their impact on the mental well-being of thisparticular group of prisoners. We anticipate that theremoval of indeterminacy in prison sentencing willhave a positive impact on mental ill-health in theprison context. However, in line with the concernsalready raised by The Howard League for PenalReform,51 alternatives may also be harmful. Withincurrent risk theory, discourse and practice there is apersistent appetite for (some) legislators, politicians,policy writers and (some of) the public to service theneeds of public protection above and beyond the fairand proportionate treatment of offenders.

Dominant, official, academic and subjugatedaccounts of mental ill-health in custody remain animportant and evolving area of critical debate. Therecurring analyses that indicate that mental illnessshould not be present within the prison environmentpose significant challenges for those involved inaddressing these issues. However at transitionalpoints such as this, changes in sentencing forexample, offer an opportunity to reflect on what hascome before and how the future presentsopportunities to develop multiagency forward-thinking interventions in the area of prisoner supportand well-being. It is imperative that a new era ofsentencing involves a shared and multi-professional(for example, policy makers, state officials, the courtsand prison authorities) understanding of theimplications of imprisonment on those whoexperience it. Such an informed approach has muchgreater potential to develop criminal justiceresponses that are legitimate, balanced andproportionate.

Issue 211 49

51. Howard League for Penal Reform [The] (2012).

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Reviews

Book ReviewCrime and the EconomyBy Richard Rosenfeld and StevenMessnerPublisher: Sage (2013)ISBN: 978-1-84860-717-0(paperback)Price:

In the aftermath of the 2008financial crisis and in the midst ofthe subsequent economic slump,the hegemony of global capitalismhas been subject to increasingintellectual attack. In a series ofpowerful and persuasivepublications, the practice ofcapitalism has come to be criticisedfor its effects including increasinginequality, weakening communalbonds and intensifying socialbreakdown.1 Within criminal justice,there has also been a growinginterest in the role and impact ofeconomics, including the linksbetween crime and the economyand the growing marketisation ofpolicy and practice.2 In this shortbut effective volume, distinguishedAmerican academics RichardRosenfeld and Steven Messner,make a contribution to thesedebates, offering a theoreticalapproach accounting for andexploring the links betweeneconomics and crime.

In the Preface, Rosenfeld andMessner set out their two primaryobjectives, which are to:

‘… shed light on themultifaceted linkages betweencriminal behaviour and thestructure and functioning of theeconomy in advanced, capitalistsocieties … [and] … demonstratethat the complex linkages betweencrime and economic factors can be

best understood when viewedthrough the lens of an institutionalperspective.’ (italics in original)

The opening two chaptersfocus on the first aim, discussingthe links between socio-economicfactors and crime, victimization andentanglement with criminal justicesystem. They also offer someeconomic accounts for crimeincluding rational choice theory anddescriptions of economicallyderived sub-cultures. The third andfourth chapters explore moreextensively the institutionalperspective so central to Rosenfeldand Messner’s account. Form thisperspective, they argue that:

‘… crime is a normal propertyof social systems which reflects thecore features of the institutionalorder. Different institutionalarrangements are expected togenerate distinctive levels and typesof crime, which should changealong with alterations to thesearrangements.’ (p.57)

They articulate what they term‘institutional-anomie theory’. In thistheory the economic order is seenin the context of non-economicinstitutions such as families andcommunities that provide a moralfoundation, The theory suggeststhat:

‘… an institutional structurecharacterized by economicdominance impedes the socialcontrol and support functions ofinstitutions which, when combinedwith an anomic cultural ethic, stripsaway the moral authority of theseinstitutions and in so doingundermines institutional regulation.In other words, when the marketeconomy dominates theinstitutional order, its rules and the

values they reflect tend to prevailover those that wouldcounterbalance market-orientatedvalues and alleviate the impact ofmarket conditions and outcomes onfamilies and individuals.’ (p.66-7)

From this basis, Rosenfeld andMessner suggest that rampant,unconstrained capitalism hasdeleterious social consequences,creating a self-interested culture.They argue that counter-balancingsocial institutions are required inorder to ameliorate these effects. Intheir conclusion, they argue thatradical new ways of thinking aboutand organising society will emergein the future, but in the meantime:

‘We see no better way to limitcrime and promote justice incontemporary developed societiesthan to reign in the excess ofmarket economies with policies thatguarantee a decent standard ofliving to all citizens and, by theirvery nature, reinforce a sense ofmutual obligation and collectiveresponsibility. That is the historicpromise of the welfare state as partof a vital and responsive democraticpolity.’ (p.118).

This concise but powerfulvolume packs a considerable punch.It enunciates and develops acredible account for the linksbetween economics and crime aswell as drawing upon work thatsituates this within a wider socialcontext. As such, this is not only abook about crime; it is a book thatilluminates the darker corners ofcontemporary global capitalism.

Dr Jamie Bennett is Governor ofHMP Grendon and Springhill.

1. For example see Wlkinson, R. and Pickett, K. (2009) The spirit level: Why more equal societies almost always do better London: AllenLane; Sandel, M. (2012) What money can’t buy: the moral limits of markets London: Allen Lane; Stiglitz, J. (2012) The price ofinequality: How today’s divided society endangers our futureW.W. Norton: New York.

2. See. Albnerston, K. and Fox, C. (2012) Crime and economics Abingdon: Routledge.


Book ReviewThe Evidence Enigma:Correctional Boot Camps andOther Failures in Evidence-Based Policymaking By: Tiffany Bergin Publisher: Ashgate (2013)ISBN: 978-1-4094-4490-9(hardback)Price: £55.00 (hardback)

The Evidence Enigma, presentsa mixed methods analysis of thediffusion and subsequentcontraction of correctional ‘bootcamps’ across the United Statesbetween 1983 and 2005. Extensiveuse of statistical methods, andrather thinner qualitative textualanalysis, combine to present a wideranging and sometimes surprisingaccount of the rise and fall of bootcamps in the United States.

Bergin claims to haveconducted the ‘most statisticallyrigorous examination of criminaljustice policy making ever undertaken in criminology’ (p. 138). Heruse of statistics, in an area that doesnot easily lend itself toquantification, is certainlyambitious. Though I baulked at thequantification of abstract conceptslike ‘legislative professionalism’ and‘liberal public ideology’, I wasnonetheless impressed — orperhaps I should say amazed —that the analysis generated a seriesof statistically significant findingsregarding these variables andothers as diverse as ‘veteran statusof governor’ and ‘incomeinequality’. Starting with basiccorrelations, and moving to morecomplicated statistical regressionsthrough to event history analysis,Bergin tests her wide range ofvariables against four mainoutcomes: the diffusion and thecontraction of adult boot camps,the diffusion of juvenile bootcamps, and the combinedcontraction of adult and juvenileboot camps. Surprisingly, many ofher variables were highly significantwith reference to one of these

outcomes, but few variables weresignificant against more than one ofthese outcomes, and nonesignificant across all four.

Compared to the scope of thequantitative section, Bergin’squalitative section, based on a casestudy of the two states Illinois andNew Jersey, lacks detail and depth.The most interesting finding wasthat role that a single pragmaticconsideration played towardsdifferent outcomes in otherwisesimilar states: in New Jersey theintroduction of boot camps wasvery much delayed by difficultiesfinding a publicly acceptable site forone.

Notwithstanding theshortcomings of the qualitativechapter, the use of mixed methodsdoes prove fruitful. For example,the quantitative section finds astrong correlation between bootcamp diffusion and a highproportion of African Americanswithin a state, but the qualitativesection provides no indication thatrace might have played a role in thediffusion of boot camps. Bergin’suse of mixed methods thus enablesher to demonstrate the significanceof a factor, race, which might nothave been apparent usingqualitative methods alone.However, further statistical analysisestablishes that the racial profile ofstates was associated with thediffusion of juvenile — but notadult — boot camps, and that stateracial profiles did not predict theclosure of boot camps within astate. In this way Bergin providessome limited support for ‘racialthreat theory’ (which suggest thatstates with higher African Americanor Hispanic populations will adoptmore punitive criminal justicepolicies), but little explanation ofwhy race might be relevant only tothe establishment of juvenilebootcamps and not to their closureor to the establishment of adultboot camps. Unfortunately theshear breadth of Bergin’s questionsand methods prevents her from

exploring such matters in anyfurther depth.

Overall, it was the veryambition of the research, and theheterogeneity of its findings thatleft me questioning its significance.Bergin tests a diverse range oftheories about boot camp diffusionand contraction and finds most ofthem significant some of the time,but none of them significant mostof the time. But, without delvingdeeper into the ambiguities of herfindings, Bergin’s extensive effortsgenerate only the unremarkableconclusion that there may be somesubstance to all the theories tested,but that the situation is toocomplex to be reduced to any singleone.

Personally, I had hoped thatthis book would provide insightsinto the role of evidence in currentBritish policy making. However, anddespite the promise of its title andintroduction, this book is not somuch about a failure of evidencebased policymaking as it is aboutpolicymaking occurring with littlereference to the available evidencebase. Boot camps, Bergin suggests,seemed so self-evidently effective tomany policy makers and voters thatlittle attention was paid to theapplicable research evidence;‘statistics could not competeagainst conviction’ (p. 114). Incontrast, over 15 years since NewLabour came to power withpromises of ‘evidence based policy’,the Coalition government’s‘payment by results’ take evidence astage further. It is no longer enoughto generate evidence based policy(or to pay lip service to it); it is nowbecoming policy that serviceproviders must provide evidence oftheir efficacy if they are to secure orretain the privilege of being serviceproviders. The US policy makers inBergin’s research may have beensceptical or disinterested in theresearch evidence relating to theircriminal justice policies. By contrastcurrent UK policy making is fixatedwith evidence. Politicians not only

Issue 211 51

want evidence to show that theirpolicies work, they want to useevidence itself as a device toimprove performance. Ours is notan environment where statisticscannot compete with conviction; itis becoming one in whichconviction is invested in thetransformative power of evidenceitself.

Dr Rachel Campbell-ColquhounHM and YOI Holloway.

Book ReviewLife Imprisonment:An Unofficial GuideBy Alan BakerPublisher: Waterside Press (2013)ISBN: 978-1-904380-93-1(paperback)Price: £9.95

Life Imprisonment: AnUnofficial Guide aims to provide aneasy to read reference book aimedprincipally at the small market ofnewly sentenced ‘lifers’. The uniqueselling point of the book is that,although there have been a numberof books and articles written by exoffenders, this has been written bya serving life sentenced prisoner,Alan Baker, who has served over 20years in prison. The manuscript ofthis book won the Koestler TrustSilver Award so promises to be aninsightful read.

A forward is provided by TimNewell, a former Prison Governor,accompanied by an interesting andapparently sincere apology fromthe author to his past victims. Thebulk of the book, however,comprises of 41 short segmentsthat explain some key pieces ofinformation relevant to the‘offender journey’ of a lifesentenced prisoner, throughouttheir time in custody, includingexplanations of Life SentenceTariffs, Personal Officer Schemesand Money Management.

The book aims to be ‘credible’to Lifers because of the author’sbackground, reflecting a literaryform of the benefits of a prisoner‘Insider’ scheme, much used acrossprisons in England and Wales. Eachsegment is concise and writtenclearly for the prisoner naïve tocustody, a common occurrence forLife Sentenced prisoners, assumingthat unlike 60 per cent of prisonerswith literacy problems, they areliterate enough to read it. Inpractical terms an audioaccompaniment may have beenappropriate for the target audience.

Although some segments arequite specialised for Lifers such asStages of an IndeterminateSentence, other segments couldeasily be applied to all prisoners,including the section about TheComplaints System, and includedifficult subjects that the authordoes not shy away from such asHygiene and Same SexRelationships in prison. Consideringthe concise nature of the book andthe potentially voluminous amountof information that could beoffered to a new Life SentencedPrisoner, there are some segmentsthat seem incredibly niche, such asthe segment on ArtificialInsemination, for which the authorhighlights, within the passage, thatonly 28 applications have beenmade since 1996.

Another drawback to this bookis that as the author is recountinguseful information from his wholesentence, some information isinvariably out of date, such asreferences to Enhanced ThinkingSkills courses and Racist IncidentReporting Forms, which couldconfuse prisoners. Furthermore, afew of the useful addresses are outof date by a number of years,including buildings that no longerexist, and the prison slang sectionappears quite dated. Future editionsof this book would benefit fromproof reading for these mistakes sothat the author’s work doesn’t losecredibility with its audience.

In summary, the book offerssome useful advice encouragingprisoner readers to behave‘positively’ in order to obtain whatthey need to progress or gainprivileges, including encouragingthem to take charge of theirsentence. It would seemappropriate for this book to beavailable in libraries in ‘local’ prisonsor in court holding cells, as well asin visitors’ centres for families andfriends to gain an insight into theoften closed world of prisons. Itwould probably be of very littlevalue to practitioners andacademics, with the exception ofstudents new to criminology thatneed a starting reference point forthe typical experiences of LifeSentenced prisoners.

Paul Crossey is an OperationalPrison Manager seconded toNOMS Headquarters.

Book ReviewKey Concepts in Youth StudiesBy Mark Cieslik and DonaldSimpsonPublisher: SAGE (2013) ISBN: 9781848609846 (hardback)9781848609853 (paperback) Price: £65.00 (hardback) £21.99(paperback)

Key Concepts in Youth Studiesis a welcome addition to the widerSAGE Key Concepts series whichprovides students with accessibleand authoritative knowledge of theessential topics in a variety ofdisciplines. Experienced authors andresearchers Mark Cieslik andDonald Simpson have acutelysummarised the complex field ofyouth studies in this concise andaccessible book. When approachingresearch and work with youngpeople it can be somewhatperplexing to comprehend therange of issues faced by youngpeople in contemporary society.



This book neatly separates therange of key concepts in youthstudies in short chapters whichintroduce major themes anddebates to the reader. The use ofconcise entries enables the readerto access the information presentedmore readily than many textbooksin the social sciences which arestructured around lengthy chapters.In addition, the authors endeavourto highlight where possible theinterconnection between theentries, further enabling the readerto contextualise each issue withinthe wider concepts presented. Thebook at first appears short (178pages) for such a broad subjectmatter, however these establishedauthors provide a very informativeand accessible discussionthroughout, which will be of valuedinterest to academics, youthpractitioners and students alike.

The book begins with anintroduction Making Sense ofYoung People Today?contextualising the differententries in the book, and sets outsome key questions which theauthors addressed when focusingon the most important issues inyouth research, such as: how dowe define ‘youth’? which providesthe focus of discussion in the firstchapter. The introduction furtherhighlights the analyticalapproaches and debates tostudying young people in relationto their cultural practice and socialidentities and life course transitionsto adulthood, setting the scene forthe core content of the bookwhich is split into two majorsections: (1) FoundationalConcepts, Issues and Debates and(2) Major Concepts, Issues andDebates.

Section one, FoundationalConcepts, Issues and Debates,consists of ten chapters addressingsome of the significantfoundations for discussion in youthresearch. The authors cover abroad range of core concepts, suchas the complexity of defining

youth; the importance of youthtransitions to adulthood;understanding youth cultures; theubiquitous nature of social policyand its direct and indirect impacton young people; the unique roleof youth workers; the complexitiesof researching young people;theorising youth; historicalperspectives of youth; the socialdivisions and inequality youngpeople face; (mis-)representationsof youth through images andlanguage. These core areas whichunderpin much youth researchprovide a broad context for sectiontwo, Major Concepts, Issues andDebates, which consists of twenty-three chapters, each oneintroducing a major area ofresearch in youth studies.

The authors address many areasof research, all of which areimportant to the study of youth. Forexample, the different spheres in thelives of young people are addressedsuch as their education, training,leisure, work and families. The socialidentities of young people in thesesettings, how they perceivethemselves, and how these evolveover time as young people age arealso addressed. The authorsacknowledge that these ‘shortentries cannot possibly hope to coverall of the developments in research’(ix), however these core concepts arepresented in an articulate andcomprehensible format which offeran excellent introduction to thereader and provides guidance toadditional reading for furtherinvestigation, which the inquisitivereader should follow-up.

Throughout the series ofentries in section two, the authorshighlight connections betweenentries using bold text. Forexample, the entry for crime isconnected to leisure. This worksvery well in the text, and isparticularly of use for readers withspecific interests, for example theyouth underclass, to quicklyidentify connected areas withinyouth studies work.

A major strength of the bookis its accessibility. For the busypractitioner with little time to look-up research — let alonecomprehend the complexities ofresearch — the short entries oncore topics provide an excellentintroduction to youth studiesresearch, highlighting key issues,which will undoubtedly bebeneficial to work with youngpeople. For the academic, tutor, orstudent, who requires a more in-depth knowledge of a particulartopic within youth research, thebook provides a nuancedintroduction to the complexities ofunderstanding, interpreting andconducting research with youngpeople, as well as the benefit ofshort introductory chaptersdetailing reading for furtherinvestigation and exploration.

The cover of the bookidentifies that the authors set outto provide a comprehensiveoverview of the different ways thatsocial science researchers haveexplored the lives of young people.This is achieved in a clearly writtenand accessible way. The complexexperiences young peopleencounter in contemporary societyas they navigate their path toadulthood is both a fascinatingarea of research and of acuteimportance. Cieslik and Simpsonpresent the core issues in acompelling and thought-provokingstyle. This well-written text wouldbe a welcome addition to anylibrary with a focus on youthstudies or work with young peopleand to anyone with an interest inunderstanding the complexitiesfaced by youth in contemporarysociety.

Dr Daniel Marshall, Monitoringand Evaluation Officer, Catch22NCAS. Visiting Scholar, Institute ofCriminology, University ofCambridge, UK.

Issue 211 53


Book ReviewWomen, Punishment and SocialJustice. Human Rights andPenal PracticesEdited by Margaret Malloch, andGill McIvor. Publisher: Routledge (2013). ISBN: 978-0-415-52983-9(hardback) Price: £80.00 (hardback)

Women, Punishment andSocial Justice is a very timely workwhich is drawn from a series ofseminars held during the summerof 2010. These seminars addressedgrowing concerns about the rise inthe imprisonment of women andthe ineffectiveness of punitiveresponses to women who are inconflict with the law. Edited byMalloch and McIvor Women,Punishment and Social Justiceprovides the reader with an insightinto the gendered nature ofwomen’s imprisonment. Accordingto the editors it ‘provides a criticalanalysis of approaches andexperiences of penal sanctions,human rights and social justice asenacted in different jurisdictionswithin and beyond the UK’. This isespecially pertinent in the light ofthe talk about the collapse of theInternational Criminal Court (ICC)and what this might mean forwomens rights, the condemnationby the Justice Select Committee asto the unacceptable delays inimplementing the Corston Reportwhich was published in 2007 andUN Women organising events atthe General Assembly to addressthe issue of women and access tojustice.

Prison has often been thefocus for concerns about humanrights violations, and campaignsaimed at achieving social justice,and for those with an interest in thecriminalisation of women. Evidenceseems to suggest that womenoffenders are receiving harshersentences from judges and

magistrates for less serious crimesand this is contributing to a steeprise in the number of women inprison.1 To reduce the number ofwomen imprisoned, a range ofpolicy initiatives have beendeveloped to increase the use ofcommunity-based responses towomen in conflict with the law.These initiatives have tended tooperate alongside reforms to theprison estate and are often definedas ‘community punishment’,‘community sanctions’ and‘alternatives to imprisonment’.Women, Punishment and SocialJustice challenges the contentionthat regimes and provisions withinthe criminal justice system arecapable of addressing human rightsconcerns and the needs of thecriminalised woman whilstneglecting to engage with thewider social and economic issues ofwomen’s lives.

The book provides insightfuldiscussions about the increasein women’s imprisonmentinternationally despite the dearthof evidence supporting the rise ofwomen’s criminal activities. Thekey themes are women,punishment and social justice witha strong emphasis on thegendered nature of new penalpolicies, penal institutions, theprovision of services both in andoutside the prison, the need forchange and the dire lack ofconsideration for complexproblems related to women’simprisonment and conflict with thelaw. These themes are addressedusing academic theory, variousresearch findings and experienceswhich provides the reader with acritical lens into how ‘correctionalpolicies become subverted bycriminal justice agenda’ (p. 206).Threading through these themesand chapters is the criminalisationof women who have mental healthproblems and the failure ofhealthcare interventions to

recognize and address thisparticular issue.

The book is divided into fourparts with a total of sixteenchapters. The chapters are coherentand there is explicit integrationbetween theory and practice. Partone provides a discussion ofcommunity provisions for womenand how the Canadian experiencedemonstrates that well-intendedcorrectional policies are easilysubverted by criminal justiceagencies. Gelsthorpe‘s chapteremphasises the point that what‘works for men’ does notnecessarily work for women andthat women are incarcerated in aprison system specifically designedto meet the needs of men. Stressinggender equality should not meanthat everyone should be treated thesame but, as Baroness Corstonsuggests, rather ‘treatment as anequal’ (p. 18).

Parts two and three providethe reader with descriptions ofwomen’s experiences in prison,both in the UK and internationally.Part two focuses on the penalcontext and part three oncommunity sanctions, human rightsand social justice. Throughout bothparts two and three there is anawareness of indirect references toHosie’s argument that a humanrights approach is vital in order toimprove the experiences of womenwho are detained, of their familiesand those working within theinstitution.

In part two Moore andJemphrey’s chapter stronglysupports Gelthorpe’s argument forchange, greater cognisance ofwomen’s mental health issues andthe provision of more adequatepersonal services regarding issuessuch as menstruation, hygiene andmenopause. Their description ofwomen’s experience ofimprisonment in Northern Irelandsuccinctly stresses the direconditions that women prisoners

1. Commission on Women and the Criminal Justice System (Fawcett Society 2006).


have to endure in prisons that werespecifically designed for highsecurity male prisoners and maleyoung offenders. References to stripsearches give clear and candidaccounts of how women’svulnerabilities are exploited withinthe prison system. Serious mentalhealth problems and self harmingare, according to Cole, endemic.Her use of the casework ofINQUEST to highlight how theinappropriate use of prison risksretraumatising women prisonersand, in some cases, leading todeath as in the cases of PetraBlanksby (p. 43) and SarahCampbell (p. 45) is thoughtful andemotional. Mills et al are somewhatscathing of the limitations of usingthe Diagnostic and StatisticalManual of Mental Disorders (DSM)when assessing women prisoners as1) they were based on the‘expectations of male developmentand behaviour’, 2) it fails to‘recognise the many symptoms ofmental disorder’ and 3) it tends toreflect the experiences of males.Their experiences of researchingmental health problems offer adisturbing reflection about theinadequacies of a clinical approachwhich is neglectful of recognisingthe ‘complexities and context ofwomen’s lives’ and this reflectsWahidin and Aday’s reiteration ofthe point that women prisoners aretreated ‘as an afterthought’ (p. 65).They explore reasons for a risingageing women prison population inthe UK and US as well as the highprevalence of mental health issuesamong ageing women prisoners.Malloch’s chapter on the OkimawOhci Healing Lodge (OOHL) andcreating a space for ‘healing’ withina prison environment for Aboriginalwomen provides insightful

challenges and discussions as to thecontradictions between the foci ofEuro- western and Aboriginaljustice.

The fragmented, exclusionaryand marginalisation of women’sexperience of the criminal justicesystem continues in part three. HereLawston refers to Liberty’sexperience of the gender responsiveapproach which frames parole asbeing similar to ‘being undercorrectional control in thecommunity’ (p. 109) and a violationof human rights in regard to Article5 of the UN Declaration of HumanRights (p. 15). This is reflected in theargument proposed by Barton andCooper that women’s penal andcorrectional institutions do notsufficiently address the practical andethical problems of women’sincarceration. Sheehan continuesthis discussion in her chapterfocusing on risk and how the courtsin Australia should not use theprison service as social services forwomen offenders. I found Beglan’sresearch into The 281 Service andthe women’s narratives aboutchange quite emotional. Despitethe rise in the imprisonment ofwomen in Scotland, this serviceprovides a forum for discussion ashow to not only manage women’soffending behaviour but also howto provide support when womenleave prison. In sharp contrast tothis chapter is Convery’s whichpresents evidence that women’sexperience of imprisonment inNorthern Ireland is inappropriate,that there is limited response by theState to concerns about women’simprisonment and that ‘the statehas perpetuated inappropriatecriminal justice responses’ towomen offending andimprisonment, which is evident in

Gordaliza’s chapter, where sheraises the question of racist andxenophobic issues that targetGitana and Roma young womenthroughout the criminal justicesystem. Malloch and MacIver’sconcluding comments detail theimportance of wider political andpublic commitment and socio-economic change. They stress theneed for more resources that willnot only support women in prisonbut also target issues such ashomelessness, poverty and socialinjustice.

Drawing on internationalknowledge and expertise, thecontributors to this book challengethe efficacy of gender-responsiveinterventions by examining issuesaffecting women in the criminaljustice system such as mentalhealth, age, and ethnicity. Crucially,the book engages with the paradoxof implementing rights within alargely punishment-orientatedsystem designed to meet the needsof the male offending population.Women, Punishment and SocialJustice will be of interest to thoseundertaking undergraduate andpost-graduate courses that examinepunishment, gender and justice,and which lend themselves to aninternational / comparative aspectsuch as criminal justice, criminology,criminal justice and sociology. It willalso be useful for practitionersundergoing professional training(criminal justice, social work, health)and for those who work withwomen in the criminal justicesystem.

Bev Orton is a Fellow in theCriminology Department at theUniversity of Hull.


The Venerable William Noblett CBE was ChaplainGeneral of HM Prison Service between 2001 and2011. He was ordained in 1978 and held a numberof posts in the community before becomingChaplain of HMP Wakefield in 1987. He continuedto work in prisons for the next decade and a half,holding Chaplain posts at HMP Norwich and HMPFull Sutton. He has written and published on prisonfaith matters, including two books: Prayers forPeople in Prison published in 1998 and Inside Faith:Praying for People in Prison, published in 2009.

He has been widely recognized for his faith workand was appointed as one the Chaplains to HM TheQueen in 2005, and subsequently awarded a CBE in2012.

MK: A number of people have said that yourgreat achievement as Chaplain General was tobroaden prison chaplaincy so that it includes allfaiths, at every level. Why did you want to do that?

WN: At the time I was appointed as ChaplainGeneral the only employed chaplains in the service wereChristian, and prisoners from other than Christiantraditions were not being enabled to properly practisetheir faith. The majority of faith representatives weretermed ‘visiting ministers’, with many experiencing thatas an excluding experience. At a time of great changewithin the service, chaplaincy needed to be much moreinclusive, to give greater recognition to the contributionand validity of the ministry of those who were notChristian. Chaplaincy needed to serve staff, prisoners,and faith communities in a way that some described as aparadigm shift to inclusion — at the same timemaintaining the integrity of each tradition (which hasalways been at the heart of all that we have sought todo) and also to be serving the common good. I believedthere was an imperative for change, and that it was theright thing to do.

MK: So you have been a bit of a revolutionary?WN: There’s been a lot of change, but hardly a

revolution. I believe in chaplaincy — in all that it cancontribute to the lives of individuals in any institutionalcontext. I experienced it in my time as a chaplain in theRAF, including some time in an RAF hospital, as a TAchaplain, and then as a prison chaplain. I have alwaysbeen committed to collaborative ministry and teamworking, inter, and intra disciplinary. I have been enriched

by the experience of sharing with people of differentfaith traditions, and have seen the contribution thatchaplains from those traditions can make.

The late David Bosch, a South African theologian, inhis magisterial work, Transforming Mission, sums up thereal process of transformation for me when he wrote: ‘aparadigm shift always means both continuity andchange, both faithfulness to the past and boldness toengage the future, both constancy and contingency,both tradition and transformation … to be bothevolutionary and revolutionary.’ He said that thetransition ‘from one paradigm to another is not abrupt’,and the agenda is ‘always one of reform, notreplacement’, with ‘creative tension between the newand the old’.

MK: What has change meant in practice?WN: The changes in chaplaincy have been many,

and initially were not always welcomed. To take forwardthis programme of work we needed to harness thecontribution of many including Chaplains, Faith Advisers,Prospect, HR and legal colleagues too. One of the firstchanges we made, with the support of senior faithleaders on what became the Chaplaincy Council, was toagree that faith representatives going into prisons tominister should be known as chaplains, a term widelyrecognised in the institutional context and already usedby some faith groups other than Christian. We also speltout what that meant with a list of principles forcollaborative team-working. We wanted, and havelargely achieved, an inclusive chaplaincy that respects theintegrity of each tradition, working for the commongood of prisoners, staff and faith communities as anessential part of prison life.

MK: What obstacles did you have toovercome?

WN: The obstacles were as much attitudinal aspractical, with some chaplains (though not all, as manyshared the need for change) and staff saying ‘we havedone it this way for hundreds of years, we don’t need tochange!’ Institutional power and privilege was strong,and understandably, not easy to change. Change usuallyrequires people to be confident in their own position,and those chaplains most sure in their own faith, and thegenerosity of that faith, were amongst the first toembrace a new vision. We required some people to bemuch more professional in their approach to enabling

Interview with The VenerableWilliam Noblett CBE

The Venerable William Noblett CBE was Chaplain General of HM Prison Service between 2001 and 2011.He is interviewed by Martin Kettle who is a former prison manager currently Home Affairs Policy Advisor

to the Church of England.


the ministry of others. Eleven years on, we rightly take forgranted that the needs of all faiths must be met, andthat, for instance, the Managing Chaplain role should beopen to any employed chaplain. This is not to say wealways get everything right, of course we don’t, but as Isaid earlier, it is evolutionary, and the journey continues.That journey involves an openness to the ideas andtheology of different faith traditions, and the theoria andpraxis of prison ministry place it at the fore-front of inter-faith dialogue.

MK: You were ordained as a Christian minister.Do you think it is harder to proclaim the Christianmessage now than when you joined the PrisonService?

WN: I think the proclamation of a Christian,incarnational message is never easy, and the complexitiesof institutional life, with rapidlychanging congregations, add tothat difficulty. Congregations inprison have changed in my 25years, with fewer people havingany knowledge or experience ofChristianity. That makes themessage, and the way in whichwe convey it as we seek toconnect it to the lives of those inprison, much more challenging.But the essence of that messageremains unchanged, and I havetried to explore this, and otherthemes, in my book, Inside Faith:Praying for People in Prison.

MK: What drew you to prison ministry? WN: As a young student at Salisbury Theological

College I had visited Guy’s Marsh, in the days it was aborstal, and had some direct experience of theconditions, hearing the stories of some of the young menheld there. In those far-off days we used to take the ladsround Salisbury, as well as leading groups in the prison. Ialso heard a talk from a prison chaplain on his ministry,and at that time was convinced the last thing I wouldever want to be called to was prison ministry! Havingbeen a curate in Southampton, I was then a Rector of sixparishes in Ireland, and subsequently an RAF chaplain.Going from there to be a vicar in Middlesbrough, I wasasked to visit a parishioner in Durham gaol. I went tovisit, a little hesitantly, and the rest, as they say, is history.Prison ministry, and people in prison, have been part ofmy life ever since. I have huge respect for the work ofprison staff, and have worked alongside some wonderfulpeople in all disciplines. There is something very direct,intense, immediate and honest about ministry in prison,that is rare to experience in other situations.

MK: Are there any individual prisoners — nonames — who stay in your mind becausechaplaincy made a difference to them?

WN: Yes, there are plenty — again, evidenced in mybook — but also many staff, too. My understanding ofchaplaincy, rooted in our Christian understanding, is thatchaplains are there for all within the walls. Chaplaincy isin a hugely privileged position in England and Wales, andis very much part of the whole life of the prison. It canand does make a difference, which is why it has endured,and flourished, despite the constant changes over theyears. Religion certainly has the potential to changepeople, but with all conversion experiences, especially inprison, you have to be cautious. What the NewTestament talks about is metanoia, turning round, realtransformation. So much of the language aboutdesistance from crime nowadays has strong echoes offaith language — and we have done a great deal of workto find the common ground between faith perspectives

and psychological perspectives onhow people change. This hasborne fruit in the ‘Belief inChange’ course.

MK: Thinking back overthe jobs you have done in theprison service, which was theone that tested you most, andhow?

MK: I served for over 14 yearsin three prisons, two high security(Wakefield and Full Sutton) and alocal (Norwich), before going toHQ in 2001. Each of those roleswas different, given the context,but the essentials remained the

same. My role in prisons tested my understanding ofhumanity, of theological and moral issues such as evil,redemption, forgiveness, etc. At HQ I was challenged toensure the contribution of chaplaincy, seen andappreciated at prison level, was also visible and relevantat the centre. And without line management overchaplains (all done at local level), we had to use ourpowers of influence and persuasion, to convince peopleof the rightness of what we were doing. The leadershipskills needed in the prison were even more relevant atHQ.

MK: Much has been said about the ‘newmanagerialism’ sweeping through the system inthe last few years. We even have ‘managingchaplains’ now. Do you think all this business oftargets, benchmarking and so on gets in the way ofreal chaplaincy work?

WN: ‘Managing chaplains’ are not significantlydifferent from co-ordinating chaplains, but for the firsttime the service has the option of a clearer managementstructure for chaplains. Chaplaincy changes as theinstitution changes, it has to, reacting positively,sometimes with enthusiasm, sometimes with resignation.It can be a challenging job to manage chaplaincy teams

Issue 211 57

My role in prisonstested my

understanding ofhumanity, oftheological and

moral issues such asevil, redemption,forgiveness, etc.


— as many Governors have told me over the years!Chaplaincy teams also need to support others goingthrough the change process, whilst also helping toensure it is good for the people at the very centre of thesystem. The chaplaincy specification, which also reflectsthe Chief Inspector’s Expectations, is a major stepforward in setting this out, whilst also helping to improvethe professionalism of chaplaincy.

MK: Chaplaincy staffing is not escaping thecurrent wave of cuts to front-line services. Are thebest days of prison chaplaincy over?

WN: The harsh reality is that every aspect of NOMSexpenditure has to be scrutinized and justified at a time ofsignificant financial constraint. Research that Icommissioned a few years ago, drew out something ofthe distinctive contribution that chaplaincy can and doesmake and provided evidence of how chaplaincy is valuedby prisoners and staff. It showed something of theessential nature of the ministry and work of chaplaincyteams. So, no, I don’t think the best days are over —Chaplaincy has always adapted to changingcircumstances whilst making its contribution to the livesof those in prison, and will continue to do so .

For example, I mentioned the Belief in Changeprogramme currently running in two prisons. Wedeveloped it to bring together faith and psychology in apositive and dynamic way that could, potentially, helpsome offenders to change their thinking, and the waythey lead their lives. It is a rare example of such an inter-disciplinary approach. It may soon be adapted for usewith offenders in the community. The programme usesvolunteers from the wider community, something thatchaplaincy has always been able to offer, working inpartnership with a number of organizations and groupsconcerned for prisoners and for their support on release.

Also too, the development of the Tarbiyyah course,led by the Muslim Adviser, to help increase theunderstanding of Islam by Muslim prisoners, and thefaith awareness booklet and other materials designed toincrease staff awareness of religious issues to enablethem to deal with the faith needs of the prisonpopulation in an informed and professional way. This isin a huge number of prisons now. We have had to workthese initiatives up from scratch — there is nothing quitelike them elsewhere.

MK: For all the multi-faith developments wenotice that the new Chaplain-General is a Churchof England priest. Do you think that’s how itshould be?

WN: Chaplaincy has worked incredibly hard overthe past ten years to ensure that chaplains from eachfaith are part of the team. As I have mentioned, this hasled to the role of managing chaplain being open to anyemployed chaplain. Whilst I would have wished to have

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seen that same opportunity reflected in the recentcompetition for the Head of Faith and ChaplaincyServices post, it was not to be, on this occasion.

MK: What advice would you give yoursuccessor?

WN: I don’t think it would be appropriate for meto offer advice to someone who has already beenappointed, but I am confident that Mike Kavanagh willcontinue to lead chaplaincy in a very positive way on itsdeveloping journey. I know he is leading a very goodteam of people at HQ, with the support of NOMS, as inturn the team seek to support chaplaincy teams,managers, Governors, and faith communities. It is anexciting time, and I wish him well, as I do the HQ team,and chaplaincy teams in prisons.

MK: How retired are you planning to be? Arethere any prison causes that you will bechampioning in the years to come?

WN: Ever since my earliest encounter with suicidein prison, in my first few weeks at Wakefield, I havebeen concerned about the impact of such an actionon staff, on other prisoners, and, of course, on thefamily and friends of the person who has died. I amjust beginning some voluntary work with a veryspecial charity, Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide,who provide just the sort of support needed by manywho have been bereaved in that way. A trainingpackage will soon be available for people such asPrison Family Liaison Officers, which we hope to offerto the NOMS. I feel very privileged to be one of theirPatrons, and intend to be very active within thecharity.

Other than that, I have deliberately taken ‘timeout’, but hope to make some appropriate contributionin the years to come.


Prison Service JournalIssue 211Issue 211Prison Service Journal

Purpose and editorial arrangements

The Prison Service Journal is a peer reviewed journal published by HM Prison Service of England and Wales.

Its purpose is to promote discussion on issues related to the work of the Prison Service, the wider criminal justice

system and associated fields. It aims to present reliable information and a range of views about these issues.

The editor is responsible for the style and content of each edition, and for managing production and the

Journal’s budget. The editor is supported by an editorial board — a body of volunteers all of whom have worked

for the Prison Service in various capacities. The editorial board considers all articles submitted and decides the out-

line and composition of each edition, although the editor retains an over-riding discretion in deciding which arti-

cles are published and their precise length and language.

From May 2011 each edition is available electronically from the website of the Centre for Crimeand Justice Studies. This is available at http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/psj.html

Circulation of editions and submission of articles

Six editions of the Journal, printed at HMP Leyhill, are published each year with a circulation of approximately

6,500 per edition. The editor welcomes articles which should be up to c.4,000 words and submitted by email to

[email protected] or as hard copy and on disk to Prison Service Journal, c/o Print Shop Manager,

HMP Leyhill, Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, GL12 8HL. All other correspondence may also be sent to the

Editor at this address or to [email protected].

Footnotes are preferred to endnotes, which must be kept to a minimum. All articles are subject to peer

review and may be altered in accordance with house style. No payments are made for articles.

Subscriptions

The Journal is distributed to every Prison Service establishment in England and Wales. Individual members of

staff need not subscribe and can obtain free copies from their establishment. Subscriptions are invited from other

individuals and bodies outside the Prison Service at the following rates, which include postage:

United Kingdom

single copy £7.00



Overseas

single copy £10.00



Orders for subscriptions (and back copies which are charged at the single copy rate) should be sent with a

cheque made payable to ‘HM Prison Service’ to Prison Service Journal, c/o Print Shop Manager, HMP Leyhill,

Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, GL12 8BT.

Contents

Editorial Comment2

14

19

25

Perrie Lectures 2013Contraction in an Age of Expansion:an Operational PerspectiveIan Mulholland

Ian Mulholland is Deputy Director ofPublic Sector Prisons.

Perrie Lectures 2013Lesson for the Prison Service from the Mid-StaffsInquiryNick Hardwick

3Nick Hardwick is HM Chief Inspectorof Prisons.

Dr Andy Aresti is a lecturer atUniversity of Westminster. He is aformer prisoner.

Perrie Lectures 2013Does Prison Size Matter? Jason Warr

Jason Warr is Programme Managerand Research Co-ordinator at UserVoice and a PhD candidate at theUniversity of Cambridge. He wasformerly a prisoner.

Yvonne Jewkes is Professor ofCriminology at the University ofLeicester.

Perrie Lectures 2013A Convict PerspectiveDr Andy Aresti

31 Perrie Lectures 2013Prison Contraction in an Age of Expansion:Size Matters, but does ‘New’ equal ‘Better’in Prison Design?Yvonne Jewkes

Paul AddicottHMP PentonvilleDr Rachel Bell

HM & YOI HollowayMaggie Bolger

Prison Service College, Newbold RevelDr Alyson BrownEdge Hill UniversityDr Ben Crewe

University of CambridgePaul Crossey

National Operational ServicesEileen Fennerty-Lyons

North West Regional OfficeDr Michael Fiddler

University of GreenwichSteve HallSERCO

Dr Karen HarrisonUniversity of Hull

Professor Yvonne JewkesUniversity of LeicesterDr Helen JohnstonUniversity of HullMartin Kettle

Church of EnglandDr Victoria Knight

De Montford UniversityMonica Lloyd

University of BirminghamAlan Longwell

Northern Ireland Prison Service

William PayneBusiness Development Unit

Dr David ScottUniversity of Central Lancashire

Dr Basia SpalekUniversity of BirminghamChristopher Stacey

UnlockRay Taylor

HMP PentonvilleDr Azrini Wahidin

Queens University, BelfastMike Wheatley

Directorate of CommissioningKim Workman

Rethinking Crime and Punishment, NZRay Hazzard and Steve Williams

HMP Leyhill

Editorial BoardDr Jamie Bennett (Editor)

Governor HMP Grendon & Springhill

Dr Linda Kjaer Minke, AssistantProfessor at University of SouthernDenmark, Institute of Law.

37 A Study of Prisonization among Danish PrisonersDr Linda Kjaer Minke

This edition includes:

Perrie Lectures 2013:

Lesson for the Prison Service fromthe Mid-Staffs Inquiry

Nick Hardwick


Ian Mulholland

A Convict PerspectiveDr Andy Aresti

Does Prison Size Matter? Jason Warr

Prison Contraction in an Age ofExpansion: Size Matters, but does ‘New’ equal ‘Better’

in Prison Design?Yvonne Jewkes

Interview with The Venerable William Noblett CBEMartin Kettle

P R I S O N S E R V I C E

OURNALJP R I S O N S E R V I C EP R I S O N S E R V I C E

OOUURRNNALALJJJanuary 2014 No 211


Contraction in an ageof expansion

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