Dr Emily Hart

This report sets out a response to the Ministry of Justice’s Proof of Evidence submitted in June 2022. The findings presented here are based on independent research and scrutiny of official data collected as part of an ongoing research project that will offer the first in-depth analysis of the UK Government’s ‘prison modernisation’ agenda in England and Wales.

Drawing upon archival research and documentary analysis, this article offers the first in-depth critical account of the prison modernisation narrative in England and Wales. By closely examining the claims behind the UK Government's current prison building policy, the article reveals that prison modernisation is severely undermined by a lack of supporting evidence as well as arguments which indisputably serve to contradict the government's claims. In concluding that modernisation is a seductive and elusive concept which has been deployed to legitimate and support investment in the prison estate, the article offers new and important insights that contribute to critical research agendas around the endurance, survival, and growth of the prison, despite irrefutable and overwhelming evidence of its failure. The analysis presented here should encourage and embolden academics, policy makers, practitioners and politicians in England and Wales, as well as those in jurisdictions where modernisation is also used to legitimate prison expansion, to engage more critically with the claims behind prison modernisation.

This chapter explores how a researcher’s pregnancy impacted on a series of qualitative semi-structured interviews with women prisoners. I will argue that the utilising of a more general feminist approach which is sympa- thetic to the needs of women and which has the notion of reflexivity and a commitment to less exploitative research at its centre was in the case of this research preferable to adopting a full feminist standpoint. Feminist standpoint theory reflects the view that ‘women (or feminists) occupy a social location that affords them/us a privileged access to social phenom- ena’ (Longino 1993, 201). In Money, Sex and Power (1983), Nancy Hartstock claimed that it was women’s unique standpoint within the social world that provided the justification for feminists’ claims at truth. In the research on which this chapter is based, commonality was certainly found between myself and the women prisoners in terms of both our gender and our experi- ences surrounding children, pregnancy and motherhood and this enhanced the research process. There were, however, other differences that our shared gender could not overcome, for example, in terms of class, power and sta- tus that meant our experiences of the social world were poles apart. I could not therefore claim to have epistemological privilege as other inequalities between us had to be considered and the approach used here therefore, while feminist in nature, stops short of a full feminist standpoint.

This book brings together a collection of emergent research that moves the debate on desistance beyond a general consideration of individual and social structural influences. The authors examine empirical developments which have implications for policy surrounding resettlement and re-offending, but also for punishment practices. Presenting thought-provoking theoretical advances and critiques, the editors challenge and enrich traditional understandings of desistance. A wide range of chapters explore how some criminal justice interventions hinder the desistance process, but also how alternative approaches may be more helpful in promoting and supporting desistance. Thorough and diverse, this book will be of great interest to scholars of criminology and criminal justice, social policy, sociology and psychology, and of special interest to researchers and practitioners working with (ex-)offenders.

Prison does not promote desistance. Statistics around reoffending following a custodial sentence demonstrate that the penal system is not effective in curtailing recidivism despite repeated government aims to reduce reoffending. Much desistance research has demonstrated that a cessation in offending is the outcome of a complex interaction between subjective/agency factors and social/environmental factors. However, desistance research has failed to engage with more radical arguments around prison abolition. This chapter therefore aims to examine this gap in the literature and advocates for scholarship and research into a ‘critical desistance’. Utilising the Real Utopias work of Erik Olin Wright (2006, 2010) as the basis for a more radical approach, this chapter suggests a framework for a critical desistance based on principles of social justice, emancipatory alternatives to punishment and engagement with wider social change. The reformist trajectory of most desistance research and criminal justice practice has led to the continued notion that prison could work under certain circumstances. A critical desistance approach is grounded in the abolition of prisons and punishment, rather than the reform of a system that serves to restrain desistance trajectories. This chapter argues that prison and penal punishment are a contributing cause of recidivism and, therefore hinder the process of desistance. Crucially, desistance research needs to engage with abolitionist theory, as the dismantling of the prison industrial complex would have the greatest desistance promoting potential of all.

This article draws on data from a major public inquiry in the UK to examine how the multinational corporation G4S sought to avoid blame for the mistreatment of immigration detainees in its care. Our analysis is based on a critical discourse analysis of oral and written evidence given by G4S and one of the company’s managing directors to the Brook House Inquiry. We show how discursive strategies of blame avoidance were prominent features of this evidence, including the scapegoating of individual custody officers, the legitimation of the profit-seeking management of immigration detention and the de-legitimation of those who brought the mistreatment of detainees to light. The article contributes to our understanding of the discursive practices employed by powerful actors to limit corporate responsibility for systemic failings.

There is a significant and growing volume of research into the way in which offenders desist from crime and their resettlement and reentry into society following a custodial sentence. As is too often the case in criminological research, women are underrepresented in these areas of investigation. This research aimed to investigate how women in the last 3 months of a prison sentence plan and prepare for their release. Using data generated from qualitative interviews with women prisoners and prison staff over a 13-month period in a closed women’s prison in England, this paper will argue that women prisoners have motivation and desire to desist from crime post-release, but their attempts to plan for release are hindered by a responsibilization discourse that runs throughout the institution and by a severe lack in all forms of capital (social, cultural, economic, and symbolic). This not only results in many women being released with little support in place to help them achieve their aims of a crime-free life in the future but also highlights the problems with a prison system based on male-centered knowledge.

What do we do when housing, mental health, disability, prisons and immigration policy become synonymous with state violence?

The building of a new ‘super prison’ in Wrexham, North Wales has begun amidst a wider expansion of the penal industrial complex. Campaigns are mobilising nationally and locally against the project. This article examines the concerns surrounding what will become the United Kingdom’s largest prison and argues that its construction is a symptom of a wider ideological attack on marginalised groups while also examining the case against prison expansion.

Although UK public inquiries garner huge amounts of public attention, there have been few systematic studies of their role in scrutinising and reforming criminal justice policy and practice. This is despite a growing number of inquiries, held under the Inquiries Act 2005, into critical matters relating to policing, justice and home affairs. This article explores the contested nature of statutory inquiries as mechanisms for accountability and opportunity for policy reform. We suggest that inquiries provide fertile grounds for criminological analysis, if we understand them as sites of contestation where political priorities compete over questions of procedure, scope and participation. Our focus is on the Brook House Inquiry into the mistreatment of detainees in a British immigration removal centre. The analysis shows a tension between the public-facing nature of inquiries and their legalistic processes.