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AbstractPrivatisation is here to stay, albeit under the rhetorical guise of public‐private partnership. All new prisons are now provided by means of competition. The recent issuing to potential contractors of the invitation to tender, and award of contract to Premier Prisons, for the DCMF (design, construction, management and finance) of the first purpose built therapeutic community prison HMP Dovegate (opened in November 2001) illustrates well some of the advantages and disadvantages inherent in the private as opposed to public mode of provision of innovative regimes.

HMP Dovegate, which opened in 2001, is one of the latest in what is fast becoming a long line of privately managed prisons. But Dovegate is no ordinary prison: within its walls it accommodates a therapeutic community for 200 prisoners. This development calls for a critical appraisal of the predominant view that privatization seals the demise of the rehabilitative ideal (Beyens and Snacken, 1994), and a re-examination of the argument that it constitutes a means of breathing life back into the doctrine (Taylor and Pease, 1989). In a liberal democracy, the potential for the private sector to deliver rehabilitative regimes depends on its ability to demonstrate that it can do so effectively and efficiently while meeting the requirements of openness, accountability and legitimacy. Although much headway has been made in assuaging concerns about issues relating to accountability and legitimacy in the context of the private management of prisons generally (see Institute for Public Policy Research, 2001) these matters take on a special significance in the specific context of the private administration of a therapeutic community prison. Some of the problems raised in this article exist only because of certain idiosyncratic features of the organization and operation of the therapeutic community model of treatment. However, other difficulties are more generally applicable and need to be addressed in relation to any privately managed prison that has the declared aim of rehabilitation. The article begins with a brief description of the growth of prison privatization and of how it has flourished in the wake of a return to a 'just deserts' philosophy and an expansionist penal policy. This is followed by a discussion of the ideological objections concerning the legitimacy and accountability of prison privatization; how these matters have been addressed, in practice, by the state; and what residual problems remain for the private contracting of a therapeutic community prison like Dovegate in particular, and for the private management of a rehabilitative system more generally.

This paper re-examines critically the role of rehabilitative interventions for a seriously neglected group of prisoners: women serving long sentences. Drawing on empirical research conducted in a democratic therapeutic community in a women's prison in the south of England, it considers how far established criticisms identify insuperable difficulties that exacerbate existing harms and inequalities. It argues that evidence can be adduced to support rehabilitative interventions that are not predominantly concerned with the reduction of criminal risk but which provide tangible benefits to the personal wellbeing of women in prison and may increase their prospects of integration post release. It explores how such rehabilitative policies and practices could be supported and protected from attrition by penal power, by embedding them within a doctrine of human rights. By challenging and replacing prevalent assumptions and justifications that uphold existing power relations in prisons, we argue that a specific duty of care, owed by the prison service to women serving long sentences, can protect, support and re-imagine their right to rehabilitative opportunities.

This paper re-examines critically the role of rehabilitative interventions for a seriously neglected group of prisoners: women serving long sentences. Drawing on empirical research conducted in a democratic therapeutic community in a women's prison in the south of England, it considers how far established criticisms identify insuperable difficulties that exacerbate existing harms and inequalities. It argues that evidence can be adduced to support rehabilitative interventions that are not predominantly concerned with the reduction of criminal risk but which provide tangible benefits to the personal wellbeing of women in prison and may increase their prospects of integration post release. It explores how such rehabilitative policies and practices could be supported and protected from attrition by penal power, by embedding them within a doctrine of human rights. By challenging and replacing prevalent assumptions and justifications that uphold existing power relations in prisons, we argue that a specific duty of care, owed by the prison service to women serving long sentences, can protect, support and re-imagine their right to rehabilitative opportunities.

Abstract:Twenty years ago we conducted an ethnographic study of Grendon in which we examined the incongruous cohabitation of a prison and a therapeutic community (TC) within a single establishment. We concluded that the partnership between the two institutions was inevitably unequal and that, whilst the prison allowed the TC a sphere of influence, penal power prevailed whenever its institutional interests were threatened. In 2010 we revisited the establishment to explore how the relationship between penal and therapeutic functions had evolved over the intervening 20 years, a period marked by considerable change in the wider penal landscape. This article considers how these broader transformations in penal policy have been negotiated within the institution and what their impact has been on the ability of the TCs to maintain their authority, legitimacy and therapeutic integrity. We conclude with some preliminary thoughts about the protection of therapeutic work in prisons and the devolution of power and responsibility across government departments for therapeutic opportunities and the sentence management of serious offenders.