In this chapter we will describe and discuss some practical ways of creating rehabilitative cultures in prisons housing people convicted of sexual offences. Our interest in prison culture began in 2002 when we conducted a study of why some men in prison deny their sexual offending (Mann, Webster, Wakeling, & Keylock, 2013). Before we began that study, we expected to find individual psychological explanations for denial, such as shame, or family factors, such as family support for denial. These explanations certainly existed, but more notably we found that men talked about feeling unsafe, feeling stigmatised, and feeling humiliated by other people in prison and also by staff. The overall finding was that when men convicted of sexual offences felt psychologically and physically unsafe in prison, their personal resources were consumed by finding ways to feel safe, and denial of their offences was one useful way to reduce their anxiety.

This finding led us to consider these issues further (Mann, 2009) and to work with others similarly interested in the importance of context (e.g. Blagden, Winder, & Hames, 2016). Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS; formerly the National Offender Management Service) consequently adopted the concept of “rehabilitative culture” to describe the ideal prison climate for rehabilitative activities and programmes to flourish and have maximum benefit, and set the development of such cultures in prisons as its first commissioning priority (NOMS, 2014). The concept of prison rehabilitative culture was originally most firmly rooted in the relationships between staff and prisoners, but over time we have extended the concept by drawing on other areas of research into prisons and criminal justice. In particular, along with staff behaviours we will consider in this chapter the importance of procedural justice, the role of leadership, the nature of the physical environment, the value of peer mentoring, and the way in which security procedures are undertaken. These are all important aspects of rehabilitative culture, but there are many others. Most of the research on which we have drawn comes from the general prison or rehabilitation literature; where there are studies that are specific to people convicted of sexual offending we have made that clear.

It is difficult for prisons to reduce reoffending (e.g. Cullen, Jonson, & Nagin, 2011). Most academics agree that imprisonment in itself has, at best, no effect on reoffending and several studies have shown that imprisonment increases reoffending. However, prisons are expected to reduce reoffending—by the public, by politicians, by the media, and by their own staff—and are repeatedly criticised when they fail to do so.

The rehabilitation literature in relation to changing offending behaviour is quite positive, with reasonable agreement that well-designed programmes can have a moderate and cost-effective impact on reoffending. However, a number of studies have shown that such programmes have greater impact when delivered in community settings rather than in prisons. The size of the effect for prison programmes is equivalent to about one prisoner in ten not reoffending compared to those who do not receive programmes. While this is a cost-effective outcome, it is not a large effect.

Why is it hard to achieve noticeable outcomes on reoffending through rehabilitation efforts in custody? There are several possible explanations, which are not mutually exclusive. First, it is possible that the criminogenic effect of imprisonment is so strong that even excellent programmes cannot outweigh this negative effect. Imprisonment disrupts positive influences in a prisoner’s life, such as relational ties, employment, and citizenship activities. It labels a person as a criminal in a way which can affect personal identity as well as invite rejection from others who are more law-abiding. And because prisons are full of people who by definition have committed crime, often repeatedly, their subcultures are antisocial, characterised by criminal attitudes, physical domination of the weak by the strong, and respect for the criminal identity. While prison staff can be important positive influences on individual prisoners, the majority of a prisoner’s interactions will be with other prisoners away from the supervision of staff, and these interactions are likely to be more antisocial and more influential than briefer and fewer interactions with staff. In prisons with particularly lean staff structures, interactions between staff and prisoners can easily become limited to simple exchanges of information or responses to requests, rather than meaningful conversations.

Second, a prison is an artificial environment where many of the usual demands of life are altered or removed, being replaced by unusual demands (such as the constant fear of physical threat from others). Stephenson (2007) noted that a custodial regime appears to have innate weaknesses that diminish protective factors and increase risks. In particular, custody curtails decision-making and planning skills in those who require them the most. Furthermore, any learning which can be delivered is provided in such an abnormal environment that the subsequent application of this learning outside of the classroom or group room is extremely limited.

Third, prison staff can inadvertently or deliberately undermine attempts to provide rehabilitation in prison. For example, in our study of why prisoners convicted of sexual offences refused treatment, Mann et al. (2013) found that some prison staff undermined the value of treatment. This happened both overtly, by telling prisoners that therapy did not work, and covertly, by failing to provide a culture where men convicted of sexual offending felt safe enough to work on their offending.

Penal experts have offered suggestions about how prisons could become more effective at reducing reoffending. Losel (2007a), for example, suggested that prisons could be more effective if they provided cognitive-behavioural programmes on a larger scale, which were better targeted, and more strongly integrated with other services such as education and work training. He also called for improvements in institutional climate. Cullen, Jonson, and Eck (2012) proposed an eight-point plan for an “accountable” prison, emphasising like Losel the importance of interventions that are compliant with the Risk, Need and Responsivity (RNR) principles, calling for non-RNR interventions to be discontinued, building stronger links with the outside community, and strengthening staff’s sense of accountability and opportunity for changing peoples’ lives while they are in prison. Smith and Schwietzer (2012) adopted the term “Therapeutic Prison” to describe a custodial environment run on the basis of the principles of effective rehabilitation: clear goals, services carefully targeted to risk and need, and staff who practise the “Core Correctional Practices”: pro-social modelling, reinforcement of pro-social behaviour, skills building, cognitive restructuring of criminal attitudes, and open and respectful communication. Common to these articulations of accountable/therapeutic prisons are two main themes. One is the emphasis on the value of introducing effective “programming” (such as cognitive skills programmes) on a wider scale within prisons. The other is developing a whole-prison culture where staff believe and behave in ways that assist the rehabilitative goal. We therefore see a rehabilitative culture as one that supports involvement in formal programmes, but also a culture that enables identity change in its own right.

There is only a small literature into prison culture as it applies to prisons housing men convicted of sexual offending. Various studies by Blagden, described in this book, have shown that prison culture has an important effect on how men participate in therapy, with a safe and decent culture freeing up “headspace” for men to focus on the future. In Germany, a study of four prisons housing men convicted of sexual offending found significant correlations between the extent to which the prisoners found the custodial staff to be supportive and the extent to which they felt able to participate in therapeutic programmes (Stasch, Yoon, Sauter, Hausam, & Dahle, 2018). These pioneering studies support our working hypothesis that a rehabilitative prison culture will boost the effect of therapy programmes.

Rehabilitative culture is most strongly about the relationships between staff and prisoners. Historically, the relationship between prison staff and those in their care has been characterised by security and control. Within the probation setting, however, there has been a growing body of research showing that the content and quality of the contact between probation staff and the person under their supervision can have a direct impact on recidivism (Day, Hardcastle, & Birgden, 2012; Drake, 2011). This shift in focus on the type of relationship between staff and people within the criminal justice setting is now turning to the prison setting, where the quality of the relationships between front-line prison staff and the people in their care is now widely acknowledged to be the single most important factor in creating safe, decent, and rehabilitative prisons.