‘Visiting time: A tale of two prisons’: A practitioner perspective
| Author | Summer Alston-Smith |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0264550517691830 |
| Subject Matter | Practitioner responses |
Practitioner response
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
‘Visiting time: A tale
2017, Vol. 64(1) 56–61
ª The Author(s) 2017
of two prisons’:
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DOI: 10.1177/0264550517691830
A practitioner
journals.sagepub.com/home/prb
perspective
Summer Alston-Smith
PACT, London, UK
Abstract
Marie Hutton’s 2016 article, ‘Visiting Time: A Tale of Two Prisons’, compares the
visiting experience across two male prison establishments and examines whether
Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights – the right to ‘private and
family life’ – was respected in the visitation process. This article seeks to compare the
conclusions of this relatively small sample base to the wider prison system including
female and young offender establishments, lending a national and political context.
Keywords
family, human rights, prison, prisoners, visitation
Introduction
Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (1950) provides for a right
to respect ‘private and family life’, on the condition that this is ‘in accordance with
law’ and democratic society. As Hutton’s (2016) research affirms, in a prison
environment visits are typically the cornerstone of a prisoner’s family life, giving
them the closest contact with their loved ones and the greatest sense of normality
during their sentence. The quality of those visits is therefore integral to how both
prisoners and their families experience custody. What struck me when reading
Hutton’s findings was the breadth of issues that arose out of such a small sample.
With only 61 interviews across two prisons, this research captures the national
Corresponding Author:
Summer Alston-Smith, Head of Services, PACT, London, 29 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UA, UK.
Email: salstonsmith@gmail.com
Alston-Smith
57
picture accurately; highlighting the wide range of visit experiences, showcasing the
impact of good and poor practices, and echoing the sentiments shared by many
prison visitors.
My own experience conducting doctoral research in prisons across England
gave me a flavour of what visitors face when coming to a prison. Most memorably, I
recall finally arriving at a prison’s gates on a cold, bitter morning, eager to put a
long journey behind me and carry out a productive day of interviewing. My
enthusiasm was quickly cut short by the guard’s cursory glance at a sheet of paper
and the comment, ‘You’re not on the list’. Despite my appeals for him to contact the
Governor to confirm my visit that day, I was summarily sent away, feeling like I was
not so much speaking to a guard at a prison, but a bouncer at a nightclub.
I was therefore particularly sympathetic to the visitors I went on to work with
during my years as a practitioner at a national charity that specializes in supporting
prisoners and their families. As Hutton has found, for many visitors the experience is
often a difficult one for both practical and emotional reasons. In terms of practi-
cality, the encumbrances often begin long before the visits hall, with visitors usually
experiencing difficulty booking visits, undergoing long and expensive journeys,
and dealing with uncertainty on the rules for...
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