‘Silo Mentalities’ and Their Impact on Service Delivery in Prison‐Community Transitions: A Case Study of Resettlement Provision at a Male Open Prison
| Published date | 01 May 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12159 |
| Date | 01 May 2016 |
| Author | ROGER MOORE,PAUL HAMILTON |
The Howard Journal Vol55 No 1–2. May 2016 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12159
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 111–130
‘Silo Mentalities’ and Their Impact
on Service Delivery in
Prison-Community Transitions: A
Case Study of Resettlement Provision
at a Male Open Prison
ROGER MOORE and PAUL HAMILTON
Roger Moore was formerly Senior Lecturer and Paul Hamilton is Senior
Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University
Abstract: Set against a backdrop of persistently high reoffending rates and the emergent
‘TransformingRehabilitation’ (TR) agenda, the main argument in this article is derived
from research of resettlement provision at a male open prison. Findings indicated that
staff showed limited knowledge of the resettlement pathways of the Offender Management
Model (OMM) and this had a direct impact on the purpose, range, and content of service
delivery prior to release. Characteristics of a ‘silo mentality’ were identified within the
prison’s organisational framework which detracted from providing a sufficiently focused
level of service according to the multi-faceted requirements of the seamless sentence and
the ‘through the gate’ ethos. The implications of this ‘myopic exclusivity’ for resettlement
policy, design and practice of the prison and for the wider context of the penal system
itself are not insignificant. They will present further major challenges and questions
for TR.
Keywords: resettlement; seamless sentence; silo mentality; Transforming
Rehabilitation (TR)
It’s official; prison does not work. That the Prime Minister has publicly
acknowledged that ‘we have to get away from the sterile lock-em-up or
let-em-out debate, and get smart about this’ (PrisonWatch 2015) is sug-
gestive, perhaps, of a paradigm shift of sorts. Prime Minister Cameron’s
recognition that ‘all the problems that may have led them to that life –
the drug addiction, the mental health problems, the childhood abuse –
remain unchanged’ (PrisonWatch 2015) is certainly welcome. However,
there have been a number of false dawns in the domain of penal policy:
compare, for example, the optimism that immediately followed the 1991
Woolf report (Woolf and Tumim 1991) with the hard ‘pragmatism’ of the
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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. 111–130
then Home Secretary, Michael Howard’s, retrenchment into the rhetoric
of ‘prison works’ and the ensuing penal ‘arms race’ (Cavadino, Dignan
and Mair 2013). No matter how genuine the pronouncements, the devil is
always in the detail. In a period of public expenditure austerity – falling
particularly hard on the Ministry of Justice – it is not unreasonable to as-
sume that an ‘implementation gap’ between policy, rhetoric and practice
could follow. Based on research with a sample of prisoners and staff at a
male open prison, this article argues that without a ‘getting smart’ commit-
ment to addressing the organisational deficiencies that persist in the prison
estate – particularly endemic silo mentalities – then any attempt to ‘treat
their [prisoners’] problems, educate them, put them to work’ (PrisonWatch
2015), will be limited in its efficacy. In short, a commitment to intelligent,
interconnected and tailored resettlement/rehabilitative interventions has
to be matched with an intelligent, interconnected and coherent prison ser-
vice. As it stands, we appear to be a long way off from achieving either of
these critical aims.
Against this background, the aim of the research was twofold: first,
to determine the type, range and perceived value of support for prison-
ers about to experience the transition from the carceral to the community;
and second, to examine to what degree the so-called seven ‘pathways to re-
settlement’ for male prisoners – accommodation; education, employment
and training; mental and physical health; drugs and alcohol; finance, ben-
efit and debt; maintaining relationships with children and families; and
attitudes, thinking and behaviour; see Home Office (2004a) – was under-
stood and applied by staff in the specialist resettlement unit. Moreover,
to what extent was (the application of) resettlement knowledge affected,
adversely or otherwise, by organisational dysfunction, or specifically, a ‘silo
mentality’?
The research largely preceded later consultation and implementation,
in part, of ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ (TR) where major changes have
been proposed for the delivery of services, including a significant expan-
sion in the role of for-profit and non-statutory sectors and an extensive
organisational reconfiguration of offender management, including the
implementation of a payment-by-results funding mechanism. Although
largely beyond the scope of this article, it is worth considering that the
findings from this research raise important questions about the extent to
which TR will facilitate effective prison-community transitions, particu-
larly when considering the potential for exacerbating – rather than miti-
gating – inter- and intra-organisational silos.
The research team hypothesised that within the prison and its wider
penal environment there would already exist the necessary capacity for
intra- and inter-departmental communication and collaborative working
to produce the requisite infrastructure to facilitate the development of in-
tegrated institutional/external agency resettlement input within the emer-
gent TR framework. It is the examination of this hypothesis that forms
a principal focus of this article: namely whether the de jure, theoretically
desired, position of organisational coherence, symmetry and efficiency is
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2016 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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