Towards a typology of prisoners’ awareness of and familiarity with prison inspection and monitoring bodies

Abstract

Inspection and monitoring bodies have an important role in the protection of prisoners’ rights. Although these bodies are seen as widely beneficial, there is limited research examining their operations in practice. This study addresses this gap in the existing literature by identifying unique profiles of prisoners based on their familiarity with prison oversight bodies. In addition, the relationship between profiles and key factors (personal characteristics, sentence-related variables and those related to life in prison) was examined using multinomial regression. Participants were 508 males randomly selected from three prisons in Ireland. Data were collected between November 2018 and February 2019, using self-administered surveys. Latent class analysis revealed four subgroups of prisoners characterized by distinct patterns of awareness and contact with prison oversight bodies: (1) Low familiarity (44.1 percent); (2) High awareness with low contact (26.4 percent); (3) High familiarity with the Visiting Committees but low with other oversight bodies (14.2 percent); and (4) High familiarity (15.4 percent). Notably, the largest group was the low familiarity group, and few prisoners belonged to the high familiarity group. Nationality, sentence length, confidence in staff and complaint usage were linked to class membership. The results of this study point to the importance of increasing awareness of inspection and monitoring bodies among prisoners in general, and among certain groups in particular.

Monitoring Prisons in Europe: Understanding Perspectives of People in Prison and Prison Staff

“…Cormac Behan (2006) posits that prisoner perceptions of, and engagement with, rights is contingent on the availability of opportunities to engage in civic participation, though, as Laura Piacentini and Elena Katz (2017) note, we simply know almost nothing of how people in prison experience human rights. Sophie van der Valk, Eva Aizpurua, and Mary Rogan (2021) have found that people in prison may not even be aware of prison-monitoring bodies and may question their authenticity or credibility, with Elizabeth Abati and colleagues (2018) express skepticism about international human rights bodies and their ability to hold states to account.…”

“…When asked to select three criteria for good prison inspection, only 36.4 percent of 508 prisoners surveyed across three Irish prisons identified confidentiality as a component of strong inspection. Independence was considered essential to only 29.5 percent of participants, whereas 40 percent of participants considered the surprise nature of inspection visits to be valuable (van der Valk, Aizpurua, and Rogan 2021). Interestingly, for the purposes of this research, recommendation making also received a low “ranking,” with only 25 percent of participants selecting this component as a contributing factor to good oversight.…”

Complaints: Mechanisms for prisoner participation?

“…Complaints may also be limited through lack of awareness of the powers, functions and even existence of complaints processes. Many prisoners simply do not know how to complain and have low awareness and contact with those oversight bodies that are ‘tasked with precisely supporting […] perceptions of safety, respect, fair treatment and the promotion of dignity’ ( van der Valk et al 2021 : 17, with reference to Visiting Committees in Ireland which are similar to IMBs). Many prisoners have either extremely limited or zero awareness of the complex complaint appeals process, internally and externally ( PPO, 2015 ), potentially because prisoners are not being provided with information on complaining.…”

“…All these barriers constrain the complaints process’ utility as a mechanism of prisoner participation that could foster fairness, legitimacy and dignity. Prisoners are not always provided with, or aware of, the information enabling them to complain ( van der Valk et al, 2021 ). If prisoners are meet with apathy, merely told to ‘ignore it’ ( PRT, 2020 : 26) and feel that there is no point in lodging complaints because nothing ever changes, this suggests that, at best, prisoner participation through complaints is limited to the ‘placation’ rung and at worst, the ‘manipulation’/‘no power’ rung on the ‘ladder of citizen participation’ ( Arnstein, 2019 : 26).…”

An analysis of inspection in probation and its impact on practitioners, practice and providers

“…Their argument shows how it is important to understand the full range of regulatory organisations, as well as the ways in which accountability can be secured from organisations that do not necessarily have the power to force change. Evidence suggests that accountability mechanisms in criminal justice suffer from a lack of visibility, poor implementation of recommendations and a lack evidence about whether they improve practice (Tomczak, 2018; van der Valk et al, 2021; van der Valk and Rogan, 2021). In this article I consider how this plays out in the context of probation.…”