Understanding Prison Staff

Jamie Bennett, Ben Crewe, Azrini Wahidin, Jamie Bennett, Ben Crewe, Azrini Wahidin

• Publisher: Willan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781843922742
• eBook ISBN: 9781134004348
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

The past decade has seen dramatic growth in every area of the prison enterprise. Yet our knowledge of the inner life of the prison remains limited. This book aims to redress this research gap by providing insight into various aspects of the daily life of prison staff. It provides a serious exploration of their work and, in doing so, will seek to draw attention to the variety, value and complexity of work within prisons. This book will provide practitioners, students and the general reader with a comprehensive and accessible guide to the contemporary issues and concerns facing prison staff.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Ben Crewe, Jamie Bennett and
Azrini Wahidin

Why study prison staff?

Anyone embarking on a study of prison staff needs to ask themselves why they are doing it, as there are obvious risks in pursuing this course. First, particularly for prison staff researching themselves, there is a danger of partiality or even indulgence. Historically, prison staff have seen themselves as neglected and unappreciated (Thomas 1972; Crawley 2004), and as a result sympathetic students of prison staff may be drawn into taking sides, or becoming partial. Second, the study of prison staff may be considered marginal or a distraction. It could be argued that the primary focus of prison research should be prisoners, since they are the people who are most significantly affected by the prison experience. Third, it could be argued that the study of prison staff acts to reinforce existing power structures either by promoting their interests above those of prisoners, or, when research is critical of prison staff, legitimising the increased centralisation of power and undermining attempts to allow and develop professional judgment and discretion. However, these concerns bring to mind three main reasons why the study of prison staff is both important and legitimate. The first is the impact of prison staff upon those in their custody. To understand the prison experience — the difference between a regime that is decent and one that is unsurvivable, or one that aids reform or one that incubates social hatred — we need a refined analysis of staff cultures, practices and ideologies and the outcomes they produce. In other words, we need to understand the effects of prison staff. The second is that prison staff, like postal workers or journalists, should be seen as a distinct occupational group (or set of groups), a topic worthy of study in their own right. Although we might argue that prison staff matter primarily because of their effects on others, it should not be forgotten that they also matter in themselves, as workers and members of the public. We know from recent research that prison officers experience exceptionally high levels of occupational stress (Arnold et al. 2007), that their work often spills over into their family lives (Crawley 2004), and that many are profoundly affected by their everyday experiences on the front-line of criminal justice. These consequences, the effects on prison staff, are of intrinsic concern. A third reason is that the study of prison staff can tell us about conceptual issues beyond the realm of criminal justice, such as the nature of power, punishment, order, inequality, care, discretion and resistance. Prison officials are representatives of the state and, as international and comparative studies illustrate (Piacentini 2004), they reveal a great deal about its power, means, resources and ambitions.

Until relatively recently, prison research tended to focus on prisoners and the effects of imprisonment, with staff variables either being invisible or subsumed within broader concerns. This is not to say that the classic studies of prison life paid no attention to the roles and functions of prison officers (though it was officers rather than other staff who were generally highlighted). Sykes (1958) emphasised the compromised nature of officer authority, contrasting the official tasks of custodial work with the realities of maintaining everyday order and relationships. Mathiesen (1965) noted the difficulties of discharging power in a bureaucratic institution, where decisions were always vulnerable to criticism for being either too rule-bound or too inconsistent. Jacobs (1977) demonstrated how officer ideologies and the relationships between managers and the uniformed workforce were critical determinants of institutional climate. Few analyses of prison life have ignored staff altogether. In places, however (for example, Cohen and Taylor 1981; Morris et al. 1963), staff have been depicted as ghoulish figures, facelessly patrolling the landings, obstructing researchers or enforcing their power in monolithically authoritarian ways.

Such studies were not directly concerned with prison staff and it would be unreasonable to criticise them for focusing elsewhere. And while portrayals of prison staff as hostile and indifferent are almost certainly partial, they should not be dismissed simply because the picture is invariably more complex. Staff brutality must not be glossed over, nor should we forget the ease with which terrible things can occur in penal contexts. Two of the most famous and frequently cited experiments in social psychology (Haney et al. 1973; Milgram 1974), let alone in penology, suggest that power has a tendency towards abuse and that personal ethics are easily obliterated in certain structural situations of which the prison is emblematic. As Roy King notes in this volume, we should not forget that these were experiments, and their real lesson is not that power inevitably corrupts but that, without accountability or regulation, its misuse is far more likely. Recent events in Abu Graib, not to mention Wormwood Scrubs, are testament to such tendencies and their enduring possibility even in countries where penal practices are relatively enlightened.

What remains unclear and critical are the conditions under which malign subcultures, or benign ones, are likely to emerge. We have little sense of exactly how or why cultures differ between establishments, or the dynamics by which they are sustained. A good deal of the early literature on prison officer culture was conducted in the US (e.g. Crouch 1980; Kauffman 1988; Fleisher 1989), whose exceptionalism in penal matters limits the generalisability of findings. Nonetheless, as this book demonstrates, considerable progress has been made in the UK in recent years in terms of understanding the roots and characteristics of prison officer culture (e.g. Crawley 2004), the nature, experience and effects of officer work and training (e.g. Liebling and Price 2001; Arnold 2005), the dispositions of staff towards prisoners (Scott 2006) and vice versa (Crewe 2005 and forthcoming), and some of the connections between staff perceptions and behaviour and prisoner well-being (Liebling and Arnold 2004; Sparks et al. 1996).

Certainly, past complaints that prison officers were the ‘invisible ghosts of penality’ (Liebling 2000: 337) and that prison sociology relied on a ‘depiction of the guards as merely shadowy figures, peripheral to the main action, who are just there as an inertial and conservative influence’ (Sparks et al. 1996: 60) can no longer be maintained. Research on uniformed staff now assumes from the start that the work, identity and culture of officers is complex and differentiated, that it is deeply inscribed by discourses of masculinity and femininity (for example, Sim 1994; Zimmer 1986; Britton 2003; Tait, this volume), and that there are huge differences between practices and attitudes in different establishments. In some prisons, particularly in the women's estate, it is little exaggeration to say that uniformed staff spend much of their time directly preventing death; in others, they participate fully in therapeutic interventions (see Genders and Player 1995), or remain primarily engaged in the traditional ‘core tasks’ of order and security. As Liebling and Arnold (2004) notes, all establishments have histories and traditions that give rise to particular conceptions of ‘the prisoner’, and particular cultures of care and control.

The literature on non-uniformed staff is much more limited. Prison governors have provided some autobiographical accounts of their work (e.g. Coyle 1994), but relatively little systematic research has been conducted to supplement what are insightful but often unusual accounts of management practices and ideologies (though see Adler and Longhurst 1994; Bryans and Wilson 2000; Rutherford 1993; Jacobs 1977). The absence of literature in this area is particularly striking given the increasing centralisation of power within the prison system. This shift, and the increasing influence of risk assessment and actuarial management, has promoted considerable theoretical attention — and has highlighted the expanding power of psychological expertise within the penal domain — but much less empirical scrutiny. Equally notable is the relative dearth of academic research on specialist prison workers. The prison system has become a major provider of state welfare, healthcare and educational services; indeed, some have argued, in other jurisdictions, that this is its main functional role as the welfare state withers and the penal state flourishes in its place (Wacquant 2000). However theorised, it is clear that educational staff, health workers, chaplains and imams, drug specialists, probation officers, workshop instructors, voluntary workers and a raft of other civilian staff contribute in increasingly significant ways to the prison's mission. Indeed, it seems likely that, while treatment and relationships on the landings are the primary determinants of the quality of the prison experience, the kinds of transformations in self-image that promote desistance (Maruna 2001) are encouraged by relationships and opportunities outside the prison wings (see Williams, this volume).

Prison staff today

At the end of 2005, HM Prison Service in England and Wales employed 48,425 staff. Of these staff, 25,971 were in the unified grades (prison officers and managers including prison governors), who usually work directly in prisoner contact roles. The breakdown of staff employed by group is set out in Table 1.1.

Although some progress has been made in making the staff group more diverse, prison work continues to be largely a white, male occupation. In total, 34 per cent of staff are female, although this is

Table 1.1 Breakdown of prison staff employed by group

Officers (including senior and principal officers)	50.7%
Operational support grades (who carry out support work such as staffing the prison gate and perimeter security cameras and escorting vehicles)	15.2%
Administration	15.3%
Healthcare	2.2%
Chaplaincy	0.6%
Psychology	1.9%
Industrials (i.e. workshop instructors)	7%
Other	4%
Operational managers (i.e governor grades)	2.8%

Source: HM Prison Service (2006).

more concentrated in non-operational posts such as administration, healthcare and psychology. Of the officer grades, 21 per cent are women. Less than 6 per cent of staff are black or from minority ethnic backgrounds, although there are continuing efforts to increase this in order to reflect the local communities in which prisons are situated.

The prison staff group is largely stable. In total, there is a 6 per cent turnover rate for all staff, although this is lower within the unified staff group at 3.5 per cent. There are approximately 5–6,000 new recruits to the Prison Service annually, with around 1,500 of those being new prison officers. The pay and benefits are competitive, particularly the pension arrangements. Pay for operational staff is set annually by an independent Pay Review Body, established in 2001.

Over the last 15 years, the development of the practice of New Public Management (NPM) has had an important impact of all prison staff. NPM emerged in the 1980s as part of a new right ideology that emphasised the pre-eminence of the deregulated market. This movement proposed that public services could be made more efficient and effective through the importation of private sector practices (Hood 1991; Pollitt 1993; Ferlie et al. 1996). In particular, this approach married two ideas: the introduction of choice and competition, and the use of business-style management practices in the public sector (Hood 1991). Within the Prison Service in England and Wales, these changes have been incorporated through techniques such as the introduction of quantitative performance measures, known as key performance targets and indicators (KPTs and KPIs), the development of audit procedures, the delegation of financial and personnel responsibility to prisons, the establishment of efficiency targets, greater controls on union activity and the introduction of private sector competition. These changes have also had an impact on the approach taken towards staff in the public sector (Farnham and Horton 1996). This change can be summarised as a move from ‘personnel management’ to ‘human resource management’. Traditional personnel management has been described as administrative, process-based and employee-centred, a welfare-orientated approach emphasising the needs of individual employees (Legge 1995). This contrasts with human resource management (HRM), which is resource-centred and directed at management. HRM emphasises the alignment of HR issues with organisational strategy and making HR an integral part of the organisation and the practice of individual managers. The differences have been summarised as entailing a more dynamic approach focused on the needs of the organisation. This transformation was an integral part of NPM, with a move from ‘a predominantly “soft” welfare-centred, paternalist approach to personnel management to a “harder”, market-orientated, rationalist one’ (Farnham and Giles 1996: 112).

Some of the trends that have emerged as a result of these developments include specialisation, professionalisation, decentralisation and individualisation. Specialisation describes the focus on the core role of each post. The most significant example is the growth of the operational support grade, which carries out tasks formerly conducted by prison officers — such as gate work and prisoner escorts — without requiring the full range of prison officer skills leaving prison officers to focus on direct work with prisoners. Another example is the national review of works departments which resulted in staff who were previously required to have both officer and trade skills now being expected either to be trade specialists or to revert to mainstream officer duties. A similar change has occurred in prison catering. These changes have enabled the Prison Service to recruit staff at lower cost, while ensuring that prison officers focus on their specialist roles working with prisoners and other roles (trades, catering) focus on their own specialisations.

Professionalisation can be seen both in the increase in the number of pr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of abbreviations
• Note on the contributors
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Part 1 Prisons and Staff Issues
• Part 2 Prison Officers
• Part 3 Prison Managers
• Part 4 Prison Staff
• Part 5 Developing the Human Resources of Prisons
• Part 6 Conclusion
• Index