Looking for expertise in all the wrong places: re-thinking who has evidence to contribute to evidence-based practice

• In Event: Roundtable: Changing Staff Culture in Corrections: Practical Realities and Evaluation Challenges

Abstract

Prison line staff in the United States receive less training than other law enforcement officials (and less training than their peers elsewhere in the world), and tend to view their work as inferior to that of other law enforcement officials, like police. Relatedly, they are often excluded from reform conversations between prisoners, advocates, legislators, and high-level correctional administrators, not to mention from much academic research on the lived experience of incarceration. These double exclusions -- from adequate training and from evaluation and reform conversations -- reinforce each other and contribute to blindspots in how prisons and prison culture are understood. We look forward to discussing how prison line staff can be better integrated into evaluation and reform conversations and what the implications of such an effort might be.

Authors

• Keramet Reiter, University of California, Irvine

• Kelsie Chesnut, University of California, Irvine