Penal Policy on Families of Imprisoned People—An Impossible Situation? Understanding Scottish Prison Policy Through Prison Staff’s Moral Sensibilities
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8401151 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rikki Wolkind (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 66 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 536-553 |
| Publication date | 2025-07-12 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal of Criminology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0955 • E-ISSN: 1464-3529 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/bjc/azaf054 |
| OpenAlex | W4412364459 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 44 |
Scottish penal policy emphasizes the rights and well-being of the families of imprisoned people, yet reports suggest persistent gaps between discourse and practice. This paper examines prison staff’s moral sensibilities regarding families. Using Zacka’s Street-Level Bureaucracy framework, it links staff moral distress to a misalignment between policy aspirations to support families and other institutional policies and characteristics that, in practice, harm them. Through this analysis, I recast the gap between discourse and practice not as an implementation issue, but as a consequence of moral incoherence in the state's position on families which, left unresolved upstream, is effectively delegated to prison staff. The paper has implications for penal policymaking and prison governance and advances a methodological argument for prison staff-focused research as a form of policy analysis
Criminology · Political science · Prison · Sociology · Child Abuse and Trauma · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Homelessness and Social Issues · Psychology
Rights and Security in the Shadow of the Irish Prison
Doing Time on the Outside
Doing Time Together
A typology of prison officer approaches to care
When the State Meets the Street
‘We are “free range” prison officers’, the experiences of Scottish Prison Service throughcare support officers working in custody and the community
Parental Incarceration and the Family
Prisons, Punishment, and the Family
The Palgrave Handbook of Prison and the Family
Families, Imprisonment and Legitimacy
Maternal Sentencing and the Rights of the Child
When the Innocent are Punished
Criminology as a Moral Science
Punishment and Modern Society
Policy mobilities and comparative penality
Fracturing the penal state
Conceptualizing the effects of imprisonment on families
Institutional racism and police reform
Prison visitation as human ‘right’ or earned ‘privilege’? The differing tales of England/Wales, and Scotland
Bureaucrats on the Cell Block
Civilizing Imprisonment
Doing the Wait
Telling Policy Stories
Prisons as porous institutions
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |