Abstract
This article suggests that the parole dossier may be working to damage prisoners’ sense of their identity through the creation of a carceral script which describes a person whom they do not recognise as themselves, and which leads to an increased narrative labour. Prisoners struggle, therefore, under that labour to form a post offence identity with which to navigate a complex process such as parole. As identity, and its repair, appear instrumental to desistance, elements of the process, such as the dossier, could be putting hopes of rehabilitation at risk. Using the analysis of 15 prisoner interviews, this article explores a parole process described as undermining agency. A process where risk assessment is perceived poorly and where ultimately the experience can lead to negative impacts on an already fragile self-identity. In conclusion, this article attempts to offer some solutions, to mitigate the negative effects, with a view to maximising the potential impact of the dossier process on future desistance, through the more meaningful involvement of the prisoner at its centre.
Keywords
Introduction
In recent years, there has been a call for a significant shift in the focus of desistance research: moving from one focused on psychological attempts to change mindsets, to one which better utilises our understanding of prisoners’ self-identity and how its shape and development directly impact on desistance (McNeill, 2006; Weaver, 2015). Desistance is described as the abstinence and consideration of abstinence from crime. It can be described as a process with peaks and troughs (Matza, 1964) rather than a state of total non-offending. A separation from
Maruna (2001) presents the notion that prisoners have redemption scripts, which are needed to enable them to see their inherent ‘goodness and conventionality’. These scripts allow prisoners to develop a more normative view of themselves. They work to change their personal narratives to form their identities anew, to redefine themselves post offence. McNeill (2006) highlights another important factor through evidence that offenders have to ‘discover’ agency in order to ‘resist and overcome the criminogenic structural pressures that play upon them’. With its emphasis on assessed risk factors and the cold hard facts of offending, the parole dossier is one such structural pressure to be overcome.
The increasing prominence of risk assessments and the narrative scripts they generate affect not just the participants’ lives but their future selves where their narrative performance negatively aligns with the bureaucratic narrative they are presented with (Warr, 2020a). Some have theorised on this notion of dissonance, with prisoners’ personal narratives represented by a constant reappraisal of their carceral identities, leading them to labour heavily to establish the sense of who they really are versus who the system says they are. Warr (2020a) describes ‘complex processes of evincing narrative acceptance in others’ as a way of explaining this reality and defines that process as ‘Narrative Labour’.
The parole dossier, which could be argued to contain the written form of this carceral script, is the first stage of the parole review process. Its compilation is the work of 26 weeks preparation by administrators, probation officials and other professionals such as a psychologist. It is known as the Generic Parole Process (GPP). The prisoner can be interviewed by these professionals, who analyse those interviews along with various other data to assess the likelihood of reoffending and look for concerning risk indicators which may put the public at risk. The resulting parole dossier can run to hundreds of pages. Parole Board members do not have an active role in producing any report pertaining to risk assessment, nor do they interview the prisoner. The dossier compiled in collaboration with the Prison and the Public Protection Casework Section (PPCS) and containing most if not all the information from any previous parole process, grows over time. The authors’ experience as a practitioner in offender management can attest to the sheer scale and complications of some of these dossiers. Prisoners are expected to be familiar with them despite many having only basic levels of reading and literacy skills (Ministry of Justice, 2022a). The parole dossier, for long-term or indeterminate prisoners very specifically, represents the very zenith of a prisoner’s ‘course of life’ in the carceral setting. Its script is weighty, and its contents often have a devastating impact on chances of release (Warr, 2020a).
This article aims to explore the relationships between the bureaucratic power inherent in the scriptural definitions of a prisoner, exemplified by the parole dossier, and the negative impact such representations have on the prisoner’s sense of who they are, or more importantly who they are trying to be. Studies that have analysed male prisoners’ experiences of parole have found prisoners who are often confused by the process, don’t understand or trust the risk assessments completed on them, and feel alienated and hopeless (Kelly et al., 2020; Padfield, 2017a, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b). These earlier explorations matter, as the findings outlined in the remainder of this article suggest that the dossier, and the narrative within, can negatively impact their chance of developing a new self-identity, thereby potentially increasing the risk of recidivism by damaging the very foundations needed for desistence.
The parole system in the 21st century
Since its inception in 1967, the Parole System in England and Wales has had its scope expanded dramatically, from a relatively small group of experts working to keep those in prison who need to be, and releasing those who do not, to a membership of 318 (Parole Board for England and Wales, 2022). As this scope has been increased, because of political changes to statute and policy, so has its workload. In the period from March 2022 to March 2023, the Parole Board received 22,082 referrals, made 29,252 decisions (including interlocutory) and refused the release of 11,050 prisoners (Parole Board for England and Wales, 2022). The Parole Board is now a large agency with a mandate to protect the public above all other considerations (Padfield, 2019a; Shute, 2012).
The expanding scope has been a direct consequence of an increased attention from politicians and the media; in recent times, this has led to a desire to ‘improve’ the Parole System. Much of that improvement work is focused on transparency and victim rights. The prisoner by contrast seems to be broadly voiceless as politicians continue responding to what could be viewed as populist perceptions of what the criminal justice system should be (Annison and Guiney, 2022). Recent government-led reviews into the various components of the Parole process in England and Wales were aimed at making the process more effective for victims and the public and have paid little attention to the perceptions of prisoners. These reviews (Ministry of Justice, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022b) have led to some improvements, such as greater transparency in decision making (Grierson, 2018), improved victims’ right to information and provided the right to challenge release decisions (Ministry of Justice, 2019), along with more recently to allow ‘public’ hearings in special cases (Ministry of Justice, 2021; Siddique, 2023).
Academics have highlighted that an increased disregard for the voice of prisoners has been observed over recent years (Aresti et al., 2016), with some highlighting the real and resonant risk to the human rights of prisoners and that the most recent reviews introduce ‘intolerable arbitrariness’ (Annison and Guiney, 2022) to the system. While the media remains well briefed on reforms, often before key stakeholders (Syal, 2022), prisoners are often left with little to no explanation of reforms (Dawson, 2022).
Risk and perceptions
Psychological risk assessment in the parole process is complex and challenging (Barry, 2019; Griffin and Healy, 2019; Padfield, 2017b). This is exacerbated by a lack of clarity regarding the actual weight assigned to psychological assessment in decision making in parole cases. Ultimately, this could lead to more risk-averse decisions being taken dependent on the relative weighting of the risk assessment being used (Shingler and Needs, 2018). It is not just prisoners who experience the process as stressful and disempowering, psychological practitioners also experience stress and anxiety regarding their place in the assessment process. Practitioners have described the tight nature of deadlines and the practicalities of trying to spend longer periods of time with prisoners among other emotional labours inherent in prison work (Warr, 2020b).
The impact of risk assessment in prison is potent (Crewe, 2011b) and yet risk judgements appear to be only of medium validity. Shute argues that there are risks for parole selectors when attempting to determine who is safe to release and who is not. The risk of ‘False Positives’ (i.e. an offender listed as ‘High Risk’ would have been released and not committed a serious further offence) and ‘False Negatives’ (i.e. an offender who was considered ‘low risk’ but then went onto commit serious further offences) was a real concern. His follow-up work with Roger Hood in relation to serious sex offenders highlighted that the findings raised important questions about what makes a ‘good’ assessor and ‘good’ assessment (Hood and Shute, 1995; Shute, 2012).
Detailed studies of the perspectives of those ‘going up for parole’ are limited, with very few focusing specifically on perspectives of serving parolee prisoners (Bilton and Bottomley, 2012; Kelly et al., 2020; Sanders, 2023). As far as can be gleaned from the current literature, there has been no published work in England and Wales which focused solely on prisoner perceptions of parole through semi-structured interviews since the 1970s (Bilton and Bottomley, 2012). Some Studies have however used small numbers of in person interviews with prisoners as part of broader parole research projects. For example, Padfield and Liebling’s work on Discretionary Lifer Panels (Padfield et al., 2000), the precursor to the Parole Board Oral Hearing as we might recognise it today, considered the formal views of seven prisoners. Additionally, Padfield’s two stage research project on Parole, published in 2017, focused on the oral hearing and the recall process, and also featured a selection of formal and informal interviews with prisoners. However, these studies were much broader in scope and did not focus specifically on the dossier nor prisoner perceptions. This does not diminish or question the valuable and insightful work presented in these examples but goes some way to demonstrate the relative rarity of this type of study in the recent literature.
This study was designed to enhance and extend the current understanding of prisoner perceptions in this critical area of research. Over the following sections, this article will consider, first, the research methodology and ethical considerations and then it will turn to a discussion of the findings before offering a conclusion which offers some suggestion as to how the parole dossier may be improved to mitigate the results of the findings.
The research
This article utilises part findings from a wider study conducted in 2020, undertaken as part of a Masters in Criminology, Penology, and Management at the University of Cambridge. The main research questions which underpinned that study were to ‘explore how prisoner perceptions about the parole system affected them’. The focus of this article is specifically on the findings which related to the parole dossier and participant perceptions of it. Previous empirical research on the parole process had sought multiple perspectives from prisoners; however, this has often focused on procedural or legal perspectives on parole (Padfield, 2017b) using mixed (Padfield, 2017a) and multi-method designs (Padfield et al., 2000) but often focusing on the perspectives of prisoners themselves as only a part, rather than main focus of the study. While this level of triangulation has provided a strong overview of processes and some detail on multiple perspectives (Fitzgerald et al., 2022; Kelly et al., 2020; Liu et al., 2020), there is inevitably some sacrifice to depth in regard to prisoner perceptions about parole. An area this research is designed to capture through a focus on the direct prisoner perspective of the parole dossier.
An exploratory and qualitative approach was used in order to gather data first hand through direct questioning (Bryman, 2001). This article, along with the study which underpins it, did not seek to determine the efficacy of any one part of the dossier or parole process overall. There was no motive to triangulate prisoner perceptions with other forms of documentary evidence, to either prove or disprove their narratives or positions. This study followed Liebling’s (2015) suggestions for doing moral research by getting the description right and by encountering people as they really are ‘articulating what is morally at stake’.
Fifteen participants from an overall group of 30 were identified for the study, after excluding any parole-eligible prisoners who had not yet experienced the parole process. The sample contained a high number of parole ‘failures’, those who had been recalled or not progressed. These participant types were a by-product of the research taking place in a local prison where most prisoners subjected to parole will be failures. It is likely that their feelings and perceptions may have been affected by these negative experiences and created a negative bias. This study did not attempt to claim any findings in relation to the efficacy of the parole dossier because of this failure rate.
The average age of participants was 52, with the youngest being 34. All but one had been recalled to prison. Thirty-six percent of participants in this study where from a minority ethnic background. Semi-structured interviews were utilised to initiate quality face-to-face interactions and gain in-depth insight (Robson, 2002). The interview framework took as its starting point the four criteria for procedural justice: trust, respect, voice and neutrality (Tyler, 2007); this was because the wider study was focused on how perspectives aligned with broad procedural justice definitions.
An inductive approach to the data analysis was decided upon. This approach meant analysis was aided by the reading and then re-reading of data, revisiting themes and ideas many times. This studies’ approach to shaping the data and developing underlying theory does borrow some elements from grounded theory in that it allowed for themes and concepts to be built ‘from the ground up’ (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). This method allowed for the research to
This study met the rigorous requirements of both the University and the National Research Council (NRC) process for Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) with no amendments. Prisoners are vulnerable. This study took care to ensure they were fully cognisant of what they were taking part in, participants were given two opportunities to consent, and they were also given a period to drop out of the study, none did. The author was both a prison governor and researcher and while there are challenges to insider research, subjectivity for example, others have argued that it ‘provides important knowledge about what organizations [people and places] are really like, which traditional approaches may not be able to uncover’ (Brannick and Coghlan, 2007).
For the purposes of this study, the author’s extensive knowledge of the environment, its antecedents, realities and its jargons provided the author with a cultural status. This allowed conversational ease along with a mutual understanding of the experiences of the custodial setting, albeit from different positions (Hodkinson, 2005; Warr, 2020a). Participants were told that the role of the author was as researcher first and prison manager second. University branded clothing was worn to reinforce this position as opposed to more regular suited attire. Participants were reminded that the interview was anonymous.
A great deal of effort was placed on these aspects to engender trust and build rapport. There were examples of great emotion, laughter and poignant accounts of their experiences during interviews and many reflected that they had told the author more than they had told anyone else about these experiences, for some it was the first time anyone had shown an interest in what
Findings
They are told they need to change but this is often from an unrecognised ‘them’ to an ‘unknowable’ them. (Warr, 2020a)
In the following section, this article will attempt to explore findings from the main study, mentioned above, and those findings which link to perceptions of the parole dossier. First, it will explore notions of ‘contextual truth’, where drafted reports, for example, do not reflect who participants believed they really were. They described distorted versions of themselves being reflected at them, broadly because of a lack of situational context. This leads to questions about the likely impact of these distortions on their identities. How then are prisoners to re-establish self-identities that satisfactorily reflect the person they believe they are in the face of continued negativity, especially when there is little scope for them to present their own personal counter narrative.
Next, it will offer the findings which relate most closely to the sense of being lost in the machinery of abstract risk assessment. Participants discussed feeling that dossier reports and risk assessments are incapable of reflecting themselves as they really are, instead they are perceived as offering a darker view on their personality with a focus on danger and offending. Many felt cases misrepresented them all together in the pursuit of relevant risk factors. Finally, it will turn to the overall impact on the fragile ‘self’. A negative and regressive focus on past offending and behaviour, without the proper recognition for the realities of life both within and without the custodial environment leads to a breakdown, for some, of their own identities. Fractured and distorted prisoners are unable to make sense of themselves, with some choosing to reject any chance of hope altogether.
Controlling the narrative
Throughout the narratives explored in this study, there was a sense that for many participants they felt the reality of their situation and the challenges they face as prisoners were not accurately reflected, ‘it’s amazing how opinion can become hard fact’ (Henry). Many participants were negative about their experience and of the impact of the parole dossier and its creation. Overwhelmingly, this is the truth of their narratives. Participants suggested that the truth of their experience was missing from judgements and reports written about them. This notion appears best described as ‘Contextual Truth’, a narrative which needs to consider the full reality of a situation from various angles, its environment and the personal experience of the individual involved. Participants described its absence as problematic and wanted the Parole Board to ‘realize that what is written down isn’t always gospel’ (Jack). Participants presented narratives which appeared to suggest that the realities of their situation are being ignored, ‘They’re only fair to you if you tell them what they want you to say. If you’re honest with them, then they don’t like it’ (Charlie), or even manipulated in a search for risk indicators: The whole process is a test to see if you’re going to react or you’re not going to react . . . everybody else in society could shout at somebody because people do . . . people do have emotions. And yet you’re expected to become this emotionless person like a robot. There’s no feeling, there’s no link with you. (Henry)
Descriptions of staff who continue to treat prisoners as if they have made no progress at all, disregarding years of courses designed to deal with their offending. These descriptions highlight the intensity of the narrative labour for participants, likely to be occurring daily given participants close contact with staff. In their attempts to form new self-narratives, participants felt any sense of disregard keenly: I heard this member of staff say to this lady officer it was maybe ‘
Narratives featured several examples of prisoners describing the context of an offence or situation being perceived to be manipulated, or in some cases even exaggerated, which for many affected the level of trust they had in officials as a result. Participants did not see relationships with officials as ‘real’ or ‘genuine’ in these cases: like I have my psychology report . . . she’s trying to paint a picture of me, like I have a propensity for violence . . . she’s basically saying, look, he was expelled from two secondary schools for fighting . . . to paint a picture that shows that from a young age, I don’t mind displaying violence, but that’s not true. I was thrown out of one school for a multitude of things they said I did, but it wasn’t strictly fighting. And the second time I got thrown out, it was nothing to do with fighting . . . it’s not a fact! so where’d she got this information from? But she’s put it in a report in black and white so now it goes to the Parole Board, they read it. (Jack)
Most participants described a lack of contextual truth when their experiences were reflected in reports: ‘I wasn’t just bumming around out there and messing around. I was actually in work. I’d got my own place. I’d done a lot within 14 months’ (Charlie). Reports were overwhelmingly perceived to be negative. They were thought to dwell too much in the past, leaving participants to struggle to come to terms with what was written about them: I was in a D-Cat. The purpose of a D-cat is ROTLS to progress, I wasn’t getting it because it was locked down, so I’m stagnating, and then compounded with the fact that I was having trouble in the D-Cat itself, well I smoked a little spliff and that. Failed the drug test, held my hands up it’s the first one in 15 years. I’ve never failed a drug test before, but they’re (probation) using that to beat me over the head with ‘
In Jack’s example above, he felt the context of the situation in which he found himself smoking the spliff was missing from the report. Without these details, he felt the narrative presented a distorted image of what really was going on for him at the time. Most participants valued interactions where the person appeared to understand or know them well, taking their full progress into consideration; this was how they conceptualised a truthful account of themselves: I just read it once (the dossier) and just bung it under the bed. I try not to get worked up on it or keep reading it because it will eat away at ya. So nowadays when I read it. I think, you know what? I don’t care what they say. I know the truth. (Muhammad)
Respect also appeared to be related to a sense of the self, identity and individuality (Liebling and Arnold, 2004), and participants wanted to be seen in the here and now not just through representations of their past selves: What they write in a dossier. It’s like you’re the worst of the worst. ‘
The account above is an example of how far off the mark many participants felt dossier reports were in capturing who they were as individuals, or how they obtained an accurate reflection of progress and therefore potential risk: ‘people look for corroborating evidence and so they don’t actually look for anything else. And so that . . . it’s not even unconscious bias, it’s just a bias, you know, and that’s not fair’ (Leo). However, there was one participant who seemed to have a more positive view, Charlie found his eventual oral hearing as a place to resolve dossier issues successfully: I came out of that parole room quite lifted because I felt that I was heard the panel were interested. I managed to talk to them or talk to the chair and the whole panel. And I managed to put forward inaccuracies that certain departments had put forward, which were ironed out, and they were happy that they were inaccuracies. (Charlie)
Charlie appeared to have taken a lot of personal ownership of his dossier, inserting documents he thought championed his progress and set about using the resources available to him to do that. There are some parallels in the way Charlie managed the parole dossier with the way women in a recent US study prepared for an oral hearing. This study demonstrated that women parolees used preparation as a means to manage nervousness and concerns prior to an oral hearing, in addition to wanting to prepare their presentation of self, with many talking about years of preparation for an oral hearing (Sanders, 2023).
There are some parallels in the way Charlie managed the process that were unique in this study; none of the other 14 men described similar approaches to managing their carceral scripts, as represented in the dossier, most either ignored or didn’t even read them. Where participants did talk about challenging reports or findings, it was often from an emotional place: ‘it’s hard not to get defensive when they’re saying things about, you know are not true’ (Jack). Conversely, many participants felt that challenge was pointless and had a more fatalistic attitude: I say to them, well, basically, you can write what you’re going to write just hope you be truthful, and that’s it. At the end of the day, they write what they want to write anyhow, even when you tell them there’s things that are not correct. (Jacob)
Lost in the machine – Risk assessment in reporting and its impact
Participants in this study experienced risk assessments in a negative way, describing the absence of contextual truth surrounding events leading to judgements about them feeling abstracted. Participants described these judgements as incorrect. This then impacted on perceptions of trust and neutrality in relation to report writers who they thought had misrepresented the detail. Many highlighted the machine-like way risk was assessed, ‘Well, it’s a computer deciding my fate, basically’ (Arthur). Most participants understood the need for risk assessment, despite their mostly negative attitudes. Equally they appreciated and accepted the Parole Board’s duty to test them in relation to their risk of harm to the public prior to release. Others suggested that the idea of ‘testing before release’ may be flawed, given its lack of real definition, what does the process mean ‘to test’ and how does this relate to risk: I think the idea of being tested is a fallacy . . . I think the question is, what are you looking for? what are you, as a system, wanting to see or what do you need to see? (Leo)
The anxiety present in these descriptions was palpable both in interview and in analysis, equally there was a sense that participants felt they were being set up to fail or the risk system was a threat (Crewe, 2011a). Some felt the system did not want them too ever be free: I told them that I am gunna be on probation until the day I die . . . they don’t like it but I’m sorry that’s the honest truth, I’m telling the truth . . . you’re not going to let me go then I be on here to the end of the day, I die. Simple as. (Logan)
The image they built was of an abstract risk assessment process churning through cold fact and not being able to see the nuanced details, therefore disregarding the human being assessed: They aint really interested in the person, they just want to know the cold facts . . . are they interested in
Many felt unless there was factual evidence for something, opinion should be considered just that. Participants talked of professional opinion not being dependable as they do not know who people Have you ever been in a situation where someone saying something about you that you know is not true, but you can’t defend yourself? It’s not a nice feeling . . . now, imagine being in that position, but the people that are saying these things about you have the power to keep you in [pause] this place
Many questioned the reliability of the data used to assess their risk and the impact of psychological risk assessment, as have academics and practitioners (Shingler and Needs, 2018; Shute, 2012). In some cases, participants talked about an appeal or request to change the opinion resulting in a worse outcome than they had started with: If you then contest that, you’re seen as not accepting what has happened. What if you weren’t? What if you genuinely weren’t what on earth happens there, you know, it’s all very horrid. (Henry)
Participant narratives talking to ‘unchallengeable’ or ‘unchangeable’ opinion was present in all interview accounts.
Risk assessment, and its abstract and machine-like process, has a profound impact on participants’ sense of agency in the parole process. The fundamental power of these assessments over participants’ futures, which were perceived as making no attempt to know the
The central role of risk assessment in parole decisions affects not just the participants’ immediate lives but also their futures and appeared as one of the most psychologically powerful elements of the dossier creation (Crewe, 2011b). The lack of control felt by most participants is present in the literature relating to total institutions and the effects of such a system on person’s sense of themselves (Goffman, 1961). Most participants’ sense of self appeared to be fragile. This did not appear to come from a generalised weakness of character more that the sense of self could be fractured under the intense pressure of their experiences. It might be more appropriate to describe this brittle state of the self as ‘frangible’.
The ‘frangible’ self
Participants in this study appeared to be constantly trying to preserve the sense of who they thought they were. Personal experience working with report authors directly affected the way in which participants thought of themselves. Participants’ identities appeared susceptible to fracture, not because of any inherent or perceived weakness rather because of weight of the narrative labour. The language used to describe them in interview was often with words associated with battle or a fight or flight response: ‘I felt like I was being stitched up, and it kind of like, gets your hackles up, and it makes you then not want to engage with people’ (Noah).
Emotion was an important part of self-preservation in the face of so many pressures on the participant. Prisoners talked about feeling they were prevented from expressing emotion truthfully or had to control it in some way for fear of it being used against them: ‘you’re not allowed to lose your temper. You know, you can’t get angry’ (Leo), ‘you’re not allowed to cross this line’ (Henry). Negative comments or continued negativity was described as a route to self-destruction by some participants. Some naturally avoided negativity and ‘did not read reports’ or ‘used self-talk’ to keep positive. Where negativity was unavoidable, it affected prisoners deeply: Negative decision, negative decision, negative decision . . . just . . . makes you start thinking, well, fuck it! You’re never going to let me go. I mean, even though I’ve behaving myself for X number of years, I mean, it then makes you feel, I suppose, like a failure . . . it’s easy to go back to old behaviours and stuff, because then you convince yourself then you’re never going to get out prison. And I was this close myself, feeling and thinking that potentially I’d never get out of jail. (Noah)
The need for emotional control on the part of participants was keenly felt. Examples of participants having to constrain themselves in circumstances where in community life they would have been free to express themselves are present in this study: I was a member of the public before I committed my offence, and I am going back to being a member of the public again, and if I was looking at how you were going to release me, then the question has to be, am I sure? But you can never be sure. You can’t. That is the fact of it. But the problem becomes then, at some point, you’ve got to allow that person the chance to prove to you that they can be all right. (Henry)
Goffman (1961) describes these constraints as ‘disruption of the usual relationship between the individual actor and his acts’. He describes the effect of these situations as contaminative to the sense of self, but also that certain aspects lead to a death of the self and restrictions on the sense of agency. Prisoners’ cannot defend themselves in the usual way by establishing ‘distance between the mortifying situation and himself’ (Goffman, 1961). The parole process can make these acts of defence riskier. Aggression or anger could be recorded and used as negative evidence against them and therefore they must exert an abnormal and unnatural control of their emotions. There are parallels to the parole experience with those described in a ‘total institution’. Hacking (2004) defines Goffman’s description of a ‘Total Institution’ as ‘places of coercion intended to change people’. If a defining factor of a ‘total institution’ is its coercion to change, then the concept can be applied to the parole process, with its aims of only releasing those ready to be released and who have changed and reduced their risk.
The sense of the inescapable nature of reports and risk judgement led to a general feeling, in most narratives, of a lack of agency. There was one exception, again in Charlie’s account, he explained how he took it upon himself to include evidence and narrative about his progress in his reports. Going as far as to get access to a computer, type up information and have it sent off to be included. Charlie’s actions were unique in this participant group, and none of the other prisoners talked about taking control in the same way. He took action to ensure his voice was present in the documentation and thought carefully about his statements to the board themselves. He knew how important it was for the board to understand who he was. Other participants reflected on their sense of agency and described how little they thought they could influence the judgements being made about them, ‘they’ll whisper the good things’ (Jack).
Piper has suggested that a ‘sense of self’ is built up of three main drivers: desire, want and character. That these drivers operate at a first order, those desires that are outside of ourselves such as world peace, and a second order being those desires about what we may wish to be as an individual. Essentially these drivers help construct a ‘desired self-conception’ and they determine elements of our personality in our own minds, such as our emotions, how we choose to react to given situations and the way we want to dress to convey this self-conception (Piper, 1985). Every person, or agent, by the nature of what agency involves, regards themselves as unique and important, even special, in the world (Pettit, 2020).
It follows that participants in this study will have cultivated a sense of themselves which may or may not include rationalising their offences. Therefore, these carefully cultivated self-conceptions are fragile to outside interpretations such as the opinion of a report writer or Parole Board member. Take for example the individual confession of the self to a psychiatrist or psychologist, exposing facts and feelings about the self to a new audience. Refusal to do so is impossible, without serious consequences on the chances of release. The power of the carceral and institutional script is clear in the narratives of this small-scale study and others (Crewe, 2011a). The increased use of psychological risk assessment in parole appears to have left many prisoners to feel their identities ‘shoehorned’ into narrow risk categories bringing them into direct conflict with their own self-identity (Griffin and Healy, 2019): This machine . . . it will tell you what risk you are of committing an offense or a similar offense. But that’s just a machine. How can that be, it doesn’t know me. (Jack)
In this study, links were found between the way in which participants’ sense of self, once passed through the risk ‘machine’, was affected.
Crewe and Ievins, in a recent revisit of Crewe’s tightness concept, suggest that what hurts those in custody most is not necessarily being governed or controlled but the sense of being unseen or misunderstood. Not being capable of making right moral and ethical choices (Crewe and Ievins, 2021). Unequal outcomes for prisoners, failures by the system to be clear about what is being assessed and how those in custody are to demonstrate change are potentially de-legitimising for the parole process. The custodial environment in which parole operates leads prisoners to experience unfair outcomes as both procedural and distributive injustice (Jackson et al., 2010). The relationships with staff, policies and practice which exert influence have been described as a ‘soft power’ within a nexus of control (Crewe, 2011b).
A negative perception of interaction and outcome does appear to matter to prisoner perceptions (Tyler, 2007). This study found examples which support the notion that people can work hard towards an offence-free life but then seemingly just give up on the quest to ‘go straight’ and fall into a ‘mood of fatalism’ (Matza, 1964). The conceptualisation of these ‘fuck-it’ moments offers suggestion that they are normally the result of ‘
Participants in this study felt the cumulative effects of negative treatment and disregard. Ultimately, participant’s identity appeared to suffer as a result of inharmonious definitions of who they are in official discourse. This led to a strained identity associated with the various burdens placed upon someone who is incarcerated (Warr, 2020a). Participants struggled under the weight of the narrative labour required to bring together who they thought they were, who the institution said they were and who they wanted others to think they were. Participants appeared to want genuine engagement and openness, they want to trust that those assigned to help them present a true account of who they are. They want to be ‘seen’.
Conclusion
These findings suggest more is to be learned about the impact of the dossier on a prisoner. The findings from this study would suggest that opportunity for those imprisoned to feel they had more control of the narrative about themselves, or at the very least a process where they could offer their own interpretation to the Parole Board, would be helpful in establishing their sense of agency. This could lead to better engagement and understanding of what has been written about them and why particular judgements have been made.
Parole Board Members once used to interview prisoners, this was lost to save money, much to some members’ dismay (King, 2018). These findings suggest that bringing a similar scheme back may prove beneficial. Creating the opportunity for a separate interaction with board members themselves, separate to the risk assessments and report writers may bring the ‘process’ to a more human level for a prisoner, allowing for an increased sense of being ‘seen’. In addition, a streamlined and dramatically reduced dossier is sorely needed, perhaps containing a simple executive style summary at its start detailing the main areas of concern. This may allow a prisoner to reflect in a more meaningful way with the dossier and therefore be more able to ask for and receive support on various aspects of the documentation. It could be further complimented by a written representation from prisoners themselves to challenge any judgements or present their own personal narrative. Furthermore, a prisoner would benefit from a clearer appeals process, so that in instances where they did not agree with the content of reports that did not mean they had to directly challenge the report writer. Instead, they would be free to make representations to a separate team such as the parole casework section, or directly to selected board members themselves who could autonomously decide whether the concerns were justified and needed further action.
These suggested changes and additions to current practice would go some way to allowing prisoners to feel they had better control and say in the dossier written about them, therefore helping them to shield their frangible sense of self from too straining a labour.As identity, and its repair, appears instrumental to desistance (Maruna, 2001), elements of the current process could be putting hopes of rehabilitation at risk. Prisoners who can successfully develop a new narrative, which repairs their identity, can protect themselves from the negativity of stigma, or past wrongs, and have greater agency to pursue a new prosocial future (Stone, 2016). No matter how terrible their past is, prisoners need to be able to hope that they can be different to be different.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
