Hollowing out peer support: Knowledge conversion in hostile knowledge environments of open prisons

This article examines peer-led induction in open prisons to explore how managerialism, responsibilisation and staff culture distort the circulation and conversion of knowledge in penal institutions. Drawing on Nonaka and Takeuchi’s SECI model, it shows that the stages of socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation were systematically fractured. Officers possessed tacit insights into the anxieties of transfer, while peers held experiential expertise; however, both forms of knowledge were displaced by managerialist priorities that privileged paperwork and audit over relational support. This created what is theorised as a hostile knowledge environment, where valuable tacit expertise was muted, fragmented or reframed. The article further introduces the peer support paradox: the tendency for responsibilisation and audit cultures to hollow out lived-experience interventions, turning them into rituals of compliance. The findings extend debates on legitimacy, responsibilisation and penal governance by showing how hostile knowledge economies erode authenticity, learning and institutional credibility.