Leading Prison Landings shares strategies for effective prison work: practical ways to communicate effectively, manage conflict, and promote change. But strategies are like tools: we reach for a hammer, not for its own sake, but to achieve a specific goal.
Picture an officer encountering a prisoner shouting. Their initial focus may be on effective presence and language – communicating clearly, controlling the situation, and calming the prisoner. But situations are dynamic. If the prisoner remains upset, the officer may use de-escalation strategies to cool things down. They can then shift to identifying and addressing the underlying issue.
Effective prison work means making a series of choices under pressure – officers select, adapt, and switch strategies to achieve their goals. What guides these choices? We begin Leading Prison Landings by suggesting four principles of effective prison work; four things which make prisons work better for prisoners and prison officers:
- Prisoners experience procedural justice
- Officers treat every moment as an opportunity for rehabilitation
- Officers are warm and maintain boundaries
- Officers meet individuals’ needs with consistency
This post looks at the evidence and rationale for each principle.
1) Prisoners experience procedural justice
Procedural justice means that decisions are made in ways that are visibly fair. To achieve this, prisoners must know why and how a decision was made, and what informed it. An action by a prison officer may be fair, objectively, but may not be perceived as fair by a prisoner. For example, if a prisoner is rude or violent, it’s entirely fair that this leads to an adjudication and perhaps a loss of privileges. But this just outcome can be introduced in different ways. We could speak brusquely: “You’re in the wrong, you’re nicked, stop moaning.” Or we could explain the same decision more carefully: “What you’ve done makes it hard for me to run the wing safely. I’m placing you on report. I want you to learn from this and act differently next time.” The latter makes it easier for the prisoner to perceive the process as fair – and so to go along with it and learn from it.
Procedural justice encourages prisoners to uphold order within the prison. In part, this is valuable because it is rehabilitative: if prisoners see the value of the fair application of rules, they are more likely to follow and uphold them. But it’s also valuable because it may make everyday prison life run more easily. The hope is that, “if officers meet prisoners’ expectations of fair, decent and respectful treatment,” prisoners are more likely to respond with “willing compliance and cooperation (Drake, 2012. 155).” This matters because, as one former prison governor puts it: “We cannot run prisons by coercion. We can only run them by cooperation. If at any time the entire population of a prison wants to walk out of the gate, there is little to stop them (Podmore, 2012, 42).” This may not be entirely true, but it emphasises the point that it’s much easier to run a prison with prisoners’ cooperation.
Procedural justice means making day-to-day interactions fairer, and fairer seeming. It means giving prisoners a say and the chance to put forward their case. This doesn’t mean prisoners get the final say. Where prisoners act unsafely, violently or rudely, they need to face the consequences. But we want them to recognise why they are facing the consequences, to understand the rationale, and – ultimately – to buy into a system of choices, rules and order. While prisoners may not admit it, they are likely to respect such a system – prisoners say they are less happy, and feel less safe, in environments which lack an active staff presence to maintain order (Crewe et al., 2014). Interviewed by researchers, one prisoner described constantly pushing boundaries, in particular by smoking on the landings. Pulled up by a senior officer and told that – if he kept doing it – the landing would be locked down and every cell searched, he stopped. “Which is fair enough,” the prisoner concluded, because I was taking the piss (Liebling et al., 2012, 94-5).” Where officers seek procedural justice, they are more likely to gain prisoners’ cooperation – and they may teach prisoners something.
2) Officers treat every moment as an opportunity for rehabilitation
Prisoners must be kept safe and secure: this is a core part of the prison officer’s role. This brings with it 101 daily tasks: locking and unlocking, roll call, searches, accommodation fabric checks, reports, adjudications, escorts and so on. But – to oversimplify – there are two ways in which these tasks can be completed. One way is to focus on getting the task done. Is every cell door locked? Is every prisoner present? Has every prisoner been searched? But the other way of looking at being a prison officer is to see every one of these tasks, every interaction with a prisoner, as an opportunity to support prisoners to change.
At a basic level, success is ensuring every cell door is locked, and every prisoner accounted for. This is vital. But a transformative prison officer will look to use the momentary interaction as they lock prisoners away as a chance to help prisoners rethink their actions, choose fresh goals, commit to change, and act on their commitments. An officer may offer reassurance to a prisoner who is new to the wing: “Don’t worry, we’ll look after you, we’ll chat tomorrow.” They could encourage a prisoner who has done well recently: “I heard you did a great job in the bike repair workshop today.” They might counsel a disappointed prisoner: “I know you’ll be gutted the visit was cancelled, we’ll talk about when we can rearrange it tomorrow, OK?” And they might ask a prisoner who made a mistake to reflect up on it: “Not a great day today, have a think about what you’re going to do differently tomorrow will you?”
What do we notice about these sentences? First, each is short. We’re not adding to the time spent locking up. We’re using that time better. Second, these interventions are tiny. We cannot guarantee any one of them will cause a prisoner to change. But we can offer each prisoner opportunities, ideas, encouragement and support. No one sentence will be enough, on its own. These interactions are powerful when they accumulate. A prisoner who becomes used to hearing that someone cares about them, that they can change, that their successes are noted may gradually come to see themselves, and their options, in a new light. The more that officers treat their day-to-day interactions as rehabilitative moments, the more likely rehabilitation becomes.
3) Officers are warm and maintain boundaries
Imagine a prisoner taking an interest in an officer’s accent. “Where are you from sir?” Consider three different ways an officer might respond:
- “That’s none of your business.”
- “I grew up in the North East, but now I live in London.”
- “I’m from Whitley Bay originally, and my parents still live there, but now I live in Wood Green, just behind the Wetherspoon’s.”
Good relationships are built on things like openness and reciprocity. In most contexts, being asked where you’re from is a perfectly reasonable question. So a response which shuts the conversation down – “That’s none of your business” – makes relationship building harder. But we can easily go too far the other way: sharing too much personal information suggests we lack clear boundaries, and may pose a security risk.
This is a simple example, but the same principle applies to every interaction. While lunch is being served, an officer can express warmth and concern that prisoners are eating properly – and ensure portions are fairly distributed. When a prisoner is frustrated they haven’t managed to get to the phones, an officer can sympathise, and get all prisoners (this one included) back inside their cells. We combine clear, firm boundaries with a warm, caring approach. Firm boundaries are crucial in keeping the prison safe, maintaining consistent rules, and helping prisoners behave appropriately. Warmth is crucial to building relationships. The better officers can balance warmth and boundaries, the better and more sustainable their relationships with prisoners become.
4) Officers meet individuals’ needs with consistency
Prisoners want to be treated as individuals. They want their wishes and needs to be understood, and met. We can only do this by using discretion. Imagine a prisoner with a sick relative – to meet their needs, we may need to give them time out of their cell to make a call, while others are locked up. But discretion is a double-edged sword. It helps us address prisoners’ needs, but without clear, shared rules, it’s hard for officers to apply rules, and hard for prisoners to navigate them. Officers need to approach discretion thoughtfully and carefully. Here, we first discuss why officers have discretion, and its potential advantages. We then consider the risks of discretion.
Prison officers are bound to use discretion at times. They must obey the law, national and local policies and guidelines. But there are too many rules for prison officers to enforce each of them strictly (Liebling et al., 2012, 138-9). Moreover, no policy is detailed enough to account for every possible situation: officers must turn laws, rules and guidelines into practice (Lipsky, 2010). For example, imagine a prisoner whose behaviour is just poor enough to justify a sanction – but who might behave worse if sanctioned. Officers must make such complex and tricky judgement calls, rapidly (Liebling et al., 2012, Ch. 1). There will always be scope for some degree of creative interpretation – so discretion in prisons is seen as inevitable (Liebling et al., 2012, 124).
Additionally, officers and prisoners welcome discretion. It’s a way to meet individuals’ needs: the rules may say one thing, but discretion allows us to soothe an angry prisoner, defuse a tricky situation, and get everyone through the day. Indeed, prisoners and prison officers frequently describe discretion as an important tool in relationship building. For example, a prisoner reports that:
It actually improves your attitude to that officer. The screws can earn respect. If a screw comes in and finds booze and pours it down the toilet, they’ve got my instant respect, because I know they’re told to nick us. I’ve lost, because I’ve lost the hooch. That’s enough of a punishment for me (Liebling et al., 2012, 142).”
We would never advocate this approach – we use it as an example of how discretion can help build relationships. Officers can use discretion to pursue specific goals. For example, asked how they would deal with unauthorised objects in cells, some prison officers said they would place the prisoner on report; others said they would remove the objects and give the prisoner a warning. Officers described this as a way to achieve the same result (keeping the cell safe) while building relationships and helping the wing to run safely (Liebling et al., 143-4).
But, while discretion may seem inevitable and welcome, it’s clearly problematic. Officers are under constant pressure to “compromise with their captives (Sykes, 1958, 58), in Liebling et al., 2012, 133).” But such compromise is risky. “One officer may find it difficult to exercise power in an area where another officer has given it away (Liebling et al., 2012, 133).” An officer describes the progression thus:
“The trouble starts because some staff, usually the more experienced ones, stick to the rules, but new young officers faced with an inmate who kicks the door, shouts the odds and demands his hot water often let them out to keep the peace and avoid confrontation. It’s only a bit of water after all. We come along the next day and say no, and the basic inmates get annoyed, saying ‘We were allowed out yesterday.’ They then wind each other up and goad each other into causing chaos – and they were working together to try to intimidate staff… (Berridge, 2021, 135).”
So, while an officer may improve their own relationship with a prisoner by turning a blind eye to a rule, they do so at the expense of the prison as a whole, and – potentially – every other officer’s relationship with that prisoner. It can also create mistrust between staff, who may believe their decisions and their credibility are being undermined by their colleagues. Whenever discretion is exercised, the risk is that an exception today becomes an expectation tomorrow.
So, our use of discretion needs to allow both for the incompleteness of guidelines and the variety of individuals and situations – and needs to allow officers to maintain consistency. Alison Liebling argues that we can solve this by treating like cases alike (Liebling et al., 2012, 146). That is, if a situation requires discretion – because it’s unusual, or the rules are ambiguous – we must ensure that whatever we decide for one prisoner, we do for every prisoner in the same situation. Prisoners on a wing, or within a prison, can expect their individual needs to be met fairly and consistently. Discretion can be applied fairly by different officers with different prisoners (Liebling et al., 2012, 147-149). An individual prison officer cannot develop such guidelines alone. But they can be aware of the need for consistency, can learn from their fellow officers what is done on their wing, and can work with their fellow officers to achieve consensus. The more officers can be consistent in the way they meet individuals’ needs, the clearer expectations are for prisoners and officers alike.
Conclusion
These principles guide prison officers’ approaches to the everyday challenges of leading the landing:
- Procedural justice makes cooperation from prisoners more likely.
- Each moment can be treated as an opportunity for rehabilitation.
- Warmth and boundaries allows them to build sustainable relationships with prisoners.
- Consistency makes expectations clearer for prisoners and officers.
Clear purposes help officers choose the strategies which will best help them pursue those purposes.
In the next post, we’ll look at the strategies themselves.
If you found this interesting…
You may also be interested in my initial post explaining how Leading prison landings attempts to codify effective prison work.
In the next post in this series, I summarise the 24 strategies themselves.
References
Berridge, D. (2021). Inside Parkhurst: Stories of a prison officer. London: Seven Dials.
Drake, D. (2012). Ch. 9: Staff and order in prisons. In Bennett, J., Crewe, B. & Wahidin, A. (eds.) (2012). Understanding Prison Staff. Abingdon: Routledge.
Podmore, J. (2012). Out of sight, out of mind: why Britain’s prisons are failing. London: Biteback.