Prison Officers, Policing and the Use of Discretion

This article considers the relevance of the policing literature to the work of prison officers. It explores the role of discretion in the distribution of privileges in prison, the results of an exploratory observational research project recently completed in a maximum security prison and the implications of the findings to date for penology. `Policing' in its broadest sense is a term meaning `the whole craft of governing a social order', as Reiner observes in his Oxford Handbook of Criminology review of the policing literature. This craft, of governing a social order, is a key problem of the prison. The policing literature—with its emphasis on `law in action', peacekeeping, the need for community consent and the observed social practices of `low visibility' police officers, offers some useful sensitizing tools to apply to the less researched practices of prison officers. Many relevant issues arise: the use of informal rules, the deployment of authority rather than the rules, the significance of `talk', and the need for scrutiny and management of discretion. Important (and possibly more distinct) aspects of prison life include the role of relationships, which are arguably `instruments of power', and the shifting power base of prison staff away from exchange and accommodation towards coercion. There is a gulf between the `rule following' or `compliance model' of prison work favoured by risk-averse officials and the `negotiation model' actually delivered by most prison staff. The sociology of prison life needs to turn its attention to these significant and changing forms of the penal enterprise.