Monitoring, Inspection and Complaints Adjudication in Prison: The Limits of Prison Accountability Frameworks

This article examines the framework for prison accountability in England and Wales, the Republic of Ireland and Scotland. Despite variations in both policy and practice between the three jurisdictions, what is striking are the similarities in their shortcomings. These deficiencies, whether based on real or perceived grievances, potentially undermine efforts to call prison governance to account. The article argues that not only should the primary bodies involved in prison accountability be independent and robust, for prisoners to experience these bodies as legitimate, transformational changes in penal culture and internal prison power dynamics must be addressed

The 'dangerous other' in maximum-security prisons

Drawing on data from maximum-security prisons in England, this article explores the way the representation of criminals as ‘dangerous others’ manifests in prison discourse and practice. Following Bourdieu, it is argued that within the ‘habitus of maximum-security’, prison staff become somewhat predisposed to seeing prisoners as essentialised, ‘dangerous others’ who are not ‘like us’, a perspective that is also reinforced in popular and tabloid print media outside the prison walls. The strength of these representations coupled with the habitus of maximum-security thus constrains possibilities for alternative representations of prisoners labelled as ‘dangerous others’ or for alternative ways of structuring the ethos and conditions of maximum-security prisons