The Iatrogenic Outcomes of ‘Well-Meaning’ Peer Led Penal Induction Interventions

• In Event: Experiences of imprisonment

Abstract

For over a century, there has been a continued increase in reported mental health and wellbeing issues experienced by prisoners across the penal estate in England and Wales. These are experienced more acutely during transfer, transition and adaptation to prison. To address the risk of self-harming behaviour and suicide, safer custody strategy has introduced measures following reception into a prison establishment. Implemented throughout the prison estate in England and Wales, the most prominent is Peer-Led Induction, a power-sharing initiative symbolic of reconfigured power. However, evaluation as to whether this initiative delivers on its aims and objectives is lacking, especially in the context of prison transfer and adaptation to the open prison estate, itself an under-researched area. To explore these areas, this research collected data through semi-structured interviews, capturing the lived experience of 21 ex-prisoners who experienced Peer-Led Induction in open prison, alongside 5 prison officers involved in the process of Peer-Led Induction. The study established that these processes place considerable strain on the participants’ mental health, reconciling them with both historic and contemporary Pains of Imprisonment. The research demonstrates that reconfigured penal power faces structural and organisational impediments surrounding knowledge management and knowledge conversion, though institutional managerialism, ineffective management and resistant staff cultures. The application of power through strategies of ‘responsibilisation’ demonstrates that a needs-driven approach to induction is lacking; self-serving motivations, paradoxical support, and abuse and misuse of power interact to divert focus from helping prisoners. Peer-Led Induction points to ‘intervention-itis’, penal intervention as a quick fix amongst policy makers, but lacking the theoretical and evaluative foundation needed to meet its intended aims and objectives. In fact, it generates unintended, ‘iatrogenic’ outcomes, which exacerbate the pain and ‘tightness’ of imprisonment for those men transferring and transitioning to the open estate.

Author

• Edwin Schreeche-Powell, The University of Greenwich