There is both hope and frustration in this article. A recent research exercise in a prison found it to be inspirational in its ethos, relationships and mission. Prisoners talked passionately about their experiences in it and its impact on their personal development. But prisoners received very little resettlement support and things sometimes went wrong as soon as they were released, not because of any ‘moral failings’ on their part, but because they could not even navigate the journey ‘home’. It looked like everything we know cumulatively about ‘better prisons’, but its prisoners were failed as they transitioned out. More ‘tragic imagination’ is required in penal policy.

This chapter assesses how correctional officers exercise their authority over inmates. How officers influence prison climates is discussed in conjunction with their roles in impeding or facilitating the goals of confinement, and in particular their impact on a climate supportive of offender change. The authors draw from ethnography on prisons across the United Kingdom to explain some correctional officers’ distrust of managers, their cynicism toward correctional reform, and their alienation from liberal humanitarian goals. Examples of officer “cultures,” informal rules of conduct, and the origins of cultural values are identified toward the end of discussing how such values might shape inmates’ attitudes toward legal authority. An important question is whether the origins of these cultural values are structural and inherent in the prison, or whether these cultures differ so greatly across prisons that other explanations must play a part.

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Despite the fact that they face the same problems, prison legislation differs between England and Germany. So do concepts and language. Can prison quality research travel under these circumstances? Are research questions and methodologies transferable from one legal culture into another? By using the example of a joint research project designed to transfer prison climate research from England and establish it in Germany and Switzerland we respond to the challenges of transferability and translatability. After examining the divergent legal cultures in England and Germany we present a prison climate research methodology developed by the Cambridge Prisons Research Centre (PRC). We then delineate the preparation, implementation and outcome of a pretest designed to show whether this cross-cultural research project can work. The concept of moral performance, and the methodology, seem to travel well while things are more complicated when it comes to translation.