Locating trust in a climate of fear: Religion, moral status, prisoner leadership, and risk in maximum security prisons

High security prisons have fundamentally changed: at one, 40 per cent of its population are Muslim. Half of this number converted whilst in prison. 55 per cent are Black or mixed race; 97 per cent are serving sentences of over 10 years. Most are held many years beyond their tariff, or expected punishment. Many prisoners are starting to regard their sentences as unexpected and illegitimate. In a recent study, we described this prison as 'paralysed by distrust'. In theoretical shorthand, staff do not 'recognise' their 'audience' any more. It is impossible to 'place trust intelligently' among a population you are afraid of. Unvalidated 'intelligence' has replaced close connection between staff and prisoners. This is the opposite of 'dynamic security', on which order in prison depends.

There are explanations for this transformation, related to social change outside: drastically lengthening sentences; the growing number of people imprisoned for offences related to terrorism, a changing political and policy climate, in which growth-related activities are regarded as 'pampering', and concerns about faith-related discrimination. Staff are not well informed about the differences between authentic faith practices and bids for power. Prisoners at early stages in long sentences undergo a kind of 'existential crisis', and the only part of the prison where life has not been severely constrained is at Friday prayers, which 120 men attend each Friday. One prisoner put it thus:

The best way to be able to feel that you can trust anyone in here is to be a Muslim ... like I said, it's a proper temptation. It's the best thing in here, really... It's the only place in the prison where there's love, where there's trust, where there's real friendships, loyalty, any of them type of things.

The other social change is managerialism, which has transformed the knowledge base of prison managers, and brought about an almost exclusive focus on risk.

The prison could not be more relevant to the understanding of British society. Six of the cases of known terrorist acts in the UK have involved young men who converted to Islam in prison. On the other hand, many prisoners are drawn to faith in prison to resolve questions of meaning, hope and identity: faith scripts can be transformative. Networks and relationships in prison shape these dynamics. Our hypothesis is that in a risk-dominated, low trust climate in which meaning is scarce, faith scripts can become transformative in the wrong direction. Where some trust flows, faith can be part of a positive change trajectory.

This territory is politically contested, risky and extremely difficult to study. The American author of the only credible study on radicalisation in prison says, this field is 'bereft of social science methodologies'. We think prison sociology - which has always explored prisoner sub-cultures, hierarchies and leadership, but rarely mentioned faith - needs theology, and that this bringing together of two disciplines would transform and humanise our understanding of the prison in ways that are of deep significance to our fractured inner city communities.

Our argument is that risk dominance and exclusion is practically disastrous and efforts at recognition and intelligent trust, undertaken clear-headedly, improve most outcomes that senior managers and the public might reasonably care about. We have been developing highly effective methods for testing this hypothesis: ethnography-led measurement. It depends on slow entry into the field, the use of Appreciative Inquiry: a creative method aimed at soliciting peak experiences and capturing what is there (so where is respect or trust found) rather than what is missing; dialogue; and 'reserved participation'; gradually organised long interviews, and then this becomes measurement. Prisoners (and staff) help us to identify what matters, to find the right language, to operationalise and explore the relevant concepts.

Research undertaken to date on prison quality by the PI and Prisons Research Centre colleagues is being used in routine performance and audit measurement of all 138 prison establishments in England and Wales (as well as internationally). The conceptual framework (areas of prison life that matter most) and measurement techniques provide an extremely valuable cultural and relational reading of prison life, shown to be predictive of (for example) suicide risk, disorder and prisoners' personal development. This ongoing, developmental research has been used in policy development on prison size, comparisons of public vs private sector prisons, refining the competition process, providing advice to Governors of poor performing prisons, in understanding the work (and reviewing the pay of) of prison officers and senior managers, and in alerting the Prison Service to new risks (e.g. of radicalisation, and the effects of risk aversion). The current project would significantly enhance the conceptual and empirical reach of this survey tool, adding several important new dimensions, as well as methods, to its development. It will deepen our understanding as well as measurement of prison moral and social climates, in ways that have direct impact on the management and operation of prisons.

The impact of introducing the Social Field Generator for use in prison sociology and the identification of leadership, for example, will provide a significant methodological development in our field. The impact of drawing on theological insight more generally will, we hope, transform the field of prison sociology, both conceptually and empirically.

We aim to produce meaningful measures of 'political charge' and 'trust', for use in comparing and evaluating prisons, but also other settings (in particular where faith differences exist).

In feeding back results to the establishments, we will produce a detailed report of the prisoner and staff findings for each establishment. In order to maximise the impact on practice, we will offer a feedback presentation/seminar to senior managers and staff, in each establishment and for the High Security Estate. We are planning the following events:
A day seminar in October 2014 to be attended by representatives from prisons, faith groups, and policy-makers, to provide interim feedback and an opportunity for discussion of emerging findings
A session at the European Society of Criminology conference, in September 2014, to report emerging findings to an academic audience.
A day seminar in May 2015 to be attended by academics and senior practitioners to explore the implications of the project.
We aim to provide the following outputs:
An article in The Prison Service Journal - a practitioner-oriented journal - to describe the research project, explain its research methods and summarise its main findings.
A short summary of the results for Inside Time, the newspaper for serving prisoners.
3 articles in peer reviewed journals
A research based book-length monograph, under the title 'Prisons and the Problem of Trust'.
An executive summary of the research findings to be distributed to senior managers and decision-makers in NOMS and beyond.
A short, practical guide to the research implications, aimed at prison staff and middle-managers
We would also:
Work with the NOMS to introduce a revised MQPL survey and discuss its use.
Respond to requests both domestically and internationally in relation to our research tools and results.
This programme of knowledge transfer and engagement would clearly meet the ESRC's aims of supporting high-quality, transformational research, meeting the needs of end-users, and contributing to public policy and practice. We are confident that it will have practical impact for prison staff and prisoners, will reshape academic understanding of contemporary punishment and the effects and operations of imprisonment, and will influence key decision-makers and managers.