Prisoner Relationships with Voluntary Sector Practitioners
| Published date | 01 May 2016 |
| Author | KATHERINE E. ALBERTSON,PHILIPPA J. TOMCZAK |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12164 |
| Date | 01 May 2016 |
The Howard Journal Vol55 No 1–2. May 2016 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12164
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 57–72
Prisoner Relationships with
Voluntary Sector Practitioners
PHILIPPA J. TOMCZAK and KATHERINE E. ALBERTSON
Philippa J. Tomczak is Research Fellow, University of Sheffield; Katherine E.
Albertson is Senior Lecturer, Sheffield Hallam University
Abstract: Recent scholarship has indicated that the voluntary sector is becoming increas-
ingly important in marketised penal service delivery. However, market policy reforms
are thought to pose risks to distinctive voluntary sector work with prisoners. Although
commentators have suggested that the voluntary sector and its staff make distinctive con-
tributions to prisoners, these have long been poorly understood. This article uses original
interview data to demonstrate that voluntary sector practitioners can offer prisoners dis-
tinctive opportunities and relational experiences. Prisoner relationships with voluntary
sector practitioners can be differentiated from those with education and custodial staff.
Furthermore, these relationships may have distinctively enduring effects.
Keywords: prisoner relationships; penal voluntary sector; emotions; prisons
The voluntary/charitable sector has recently gained scholarly attention in
light of its prominence in the further marketisation of penal services in
England and Wales (for example, Meek, Gojkovic and Mills 2013; Maguire
2012; Corcoran 2011; Neilson 2009). As part of broad packages of reform,
policy developments have emphasised the role for voluntary organisations
in the penal service market. For example, Breaking the Cycle Green Paper
(Ministry of Justice (MoJ) 2010) and Transforming Rehabilitation: A Strategy
for Reform (Ministry of Justice (MoJ) 2013) stressed the role for voluntary
organisations in payment-by-results contracting. The role of the sector is
already considered such that ‘there can hardly be a prison in the country
that could continue to work as it does if there was a large scale collapse’ of
voluntary, community and social enterprise services for people in custody
(Martin 2013, no pagination; see, also, Neuberger 2009). Yet, and despite
this prominence, the penal voluntary sector’s contributions to prisoners
(amongst its other service users) are poorly understood.
Although voluntary sector practitioners are often argued to make a
‘special’ or distinctive contribution to prisoners, in contrast to public or
private sector engagement (Maguire 2012, p.490; see, also, Corcoran and
Hucklesby 2013; Mills, Meek and Gojkovic 2012; Neuberger 2009), this
has not been substantiated through research (Armstrong 2002). Indeed,
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2016 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
The Howard Journal Vol55 No 1–2. May 2016
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 57–72
there is a relative dearth of research in the area (Meek, Gojkovic and
Mills 2013; Corcoran 2011; Mills, Meek and Gojkovic 2011). The idea of
bottom-up ‘voluntary’ and ‘community’ action exerts a hold over criminal
justice policy reform movements and evokes a powerful and ‘richly positive
imagery’ of inclusion, but this remains under-theorised and unproven
(Armstrong 2002, p.351; see, also, Crawford 1999, p.151).
In this article we address this dearth of research and provide a prelim-
inary analysis of prisoner relationships with voluntary sector practition-
ers. We use original data gathered through interviews with prisoners and
voluntary sector practitioners in England to argue that relationships be-
tween prisoners and voluntary sector practitioners can be distinctive and
valuable, for reasons which include facilitating authentic emotional ex-
pression amongst prisoners. Our analysis illustrates that prisoner relation-
ships with voluntary sector practitioners can be distinguished from those
with education and custodial staff. Our data indicate that relationships
between prisoners and voluntary sector practitioners may be particularly
distinctive because they can both affect the immediate experience of im-
prisonment (Crewe et al. 2013; Albertson 2015) and also enable enduring
prisoner transformations. However,the distinctiveness of relationships be-
tween prisoners and voluntary sector practitioners should not be assumed
and is likely to be affected by the conditions of individual voluntary sector
programmes and prison settings (which include: by informal arrangement;
contractual marketised relationships; and payment-by-results contracting).
By including original data, this article reaches past the powerful, but poten-
tially misleading, ‘imagery of what we think they (voluntary organisations)
are and do’ (Armstrong 2002, p.362) to produce empirically-underpinned
understandings.
Our data are situated in the penal and policy context of England and
Wales. Although there are important differences between territories, the
voluntary sector and its role in the marketisation of penal services are
issues of international import. This discussion is, therefore, also relevant
to Canada, the USA, and Australia, where there are similar criminal justice
policy developments involving the voluntary sector (Ilcan and Basok 2004;
Armstrong 2002; Wallis 2001).
This article is organised as follows. First, we define the voluntary sector
and consider the theoretical foundation to support the idea of a distinc-
tive ‘voluntary sector’ relational experience. We then examine the im-
portance of relationships in prisons and desistance scholarship. Next, we
draw on original interview data to demonstrate that prisoner relationships
with voluntary sector practitioners can be valuable and differentiated from
those with education and custodial staff. We also indicate that these ef-
fects can endure in space and time, making these relationships particularly
valuable.
The Penal Voluntary Sector
Voluntary organisations1are formally constituted organisations outside
the public sector, whose main distinguishing feature is that they do not
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2016 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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