Managing Prisons

“Focusing on key issues such as austerity, the reform prison and the Covid-19 pandemic, the book outlines periods of time when prison managers have been allowed to exercise local autonomy but also when the centre has asserted managerial claw-back. It is an excellent contribution to the literature.” -Professor Karen Harrison, Lincoln Law School, University of Lincoln, UK “This will be invaluable to practitioners, academics and observers of our prisons.” -Tom Wheatley, President of the Prison Governors’ Association, UK. This book critiques the practices of managerialism and their effects on those who live and work in prisons. It draws upon ethnographic research conducted in English prisons over a 15 year period, written by a former prison governor. Since the last years of the 20th century, public services in England have increasingly adopted managerial approaches with an architecture of target setting, surveillance and assertive line management. The book examines how this system was created and then evolved during the period of austerity after 2010 and was disrupted during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020-22. It proposes an alternative approach, re-energising the agency of prison managers, reinvigorating a more localised approach, and developing measures that address the lived experience of people in prison. This book will be of particular relevance to prison managers and policy makers, researchers interested in criminology, the sociology of prisons, and the sociology of work, as well as to post-graduate students exploring prison work. Jamie Bennett has worked in prisons and the criminal justice system since 1996. He was governor of four prisons including: HMP Grendon, the only prison to operate entirely as a series of therapeutic communities; HMP Long Lartin, a high security prison; HMP Springhill, an innovative open prison helping men prepare for resettlement into the community, and; HMP Morton Hall, a women’s prison working with a diverse international population. He was also head of operational security for prisons in England and Wales and Chief Operating Officer of the Youth Justice Board. In addition, he is a Research Associate at University of Oxford and Honorary Fellow at University of Edinburgh.