 |
The policing of researchers. Funding fit
|
|
|
|
The policing of researchers
Schumann (2013) goes on to consider the growing prevalence of the patronage of criminological research by the State in terms of research funding. These develop- ments have led to what Schumann describes as an ‘access for loyalty bargain’ – an understanding that the researcher will not report on her observations in a way that will harm the funder or the institution studied. The impact of disloyalty by ‘deviant’ criminologists is the rejection of research findings and a perceived incompatibility in terms of future research projects. This may result in the self-policing of researchers so they can continue to receive State funding – such as from the police service, the Ministry of Justice or the Home Office – for future studies. For Walters (2003), there are also other forms of policing researchers. The technocratic and pragmatic needs of government departments and funders/sponsors not only shape the parameters of what is researched (and what is not) but also place a straightjacket on academic inde- pendence by the monitoring of the research process itself:
[Research] contracts may include legal requirements that the researcher meet monthly with the client to discuss progress, that the researcher notify the client in writing of any
changes to the original methodology, that the researcher submit one or two interim reports before the final report, that the principal researcher have all staff approved by the client, and that any changes to the research team be brought to the client’s attention in writing. (Walters, 2003: 87)
The policing of researchers is nothing new. One of the most well-known examples is the study of long-term prisoners in Durham prison by Stan Cohen and Laurie Taylor in the early 1970s. Cohen and Taylor (1972) drew on an innovative methodology and proposed that the ontological assumptions of the research should be determined by prisoners themselves. The Home Office considered the research unscientific and after the Prison Department (now the Prison Service) had placed intolerable con- straints upon the research methodology, the project was abandoned.
Today, there are specific requirements for undertaking research in prisons. The deci- sion on access to research in prisons was made by Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) and there is a long and detailed application form (see Box 6. 3).
 |
Funding fit
Funding fit refers to the level of correspondence between the ontological assump- tions of the research funder and the researcher. Let us return to the running theme in this chapter around the ontological and epistemological assumptions of the prison
place. In so doing we shall consider the framing of self-inflicted deaths in prison and ‘funding fit’. A self-inflicted death (SID) occurs when someone takes their own life. In England and Wales, a prisoner kills themselves on average once every three days (INQUEST, 2016). Every five hours, a prisoner is officially recorded as attempting to take their own life and every 20 minutes a prisoner is officially recorded as having self-harmed. The likelihood of a prisoner taking their own life is between four and eleven times higher than the general population. For some liberal penal reformers (especially those closely associated with the Prison Research Centre at the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, such as Alison Liebling) and in much contemporary penal policy and practice, it is assumed that SIDs arise from a combination of ‘risky prison- ers’, who may or may not be psychiatrically ill, and an inability to cope with the stress of confinement. A highly stressful environment for ‘non-copers’ is believed to turn already existing emotional disturbances into suicidal ideation (the idea of sui- cide). Suicidal prisoners simply do not have the personal resources to cope with the deprivations of an ‘unhealthy’ and poorly performing prison (Liebling, 1992). The ontological assumption is that the prison environment can be healthy and safe for people with vulnerabilities, but becomes deadly when it falls below certain standards. For prison abolitionists, the idea of dividing prisoners between ‘copers’ and ‘non- copers’ is problematic because it creates false assumptions about who is and who is not ‘suicide prone’. Indeed, as Cohen and Taylor (1972) pointed out many years ago, most prisoners only just about cope with prison life. The real pains of imprisonment are not to be found in the given quality of living conditions, relationships with staff or levels of crowding, but in the denial of personal autonomy, feelings of time con- sciousness and the lack of an effective vocabulary to express the hardship of watching life waste away. Prisons are institutions structured in such a way that they systemati- cally deny human need and generate suicidal ideation. Deaths in prison should not then be considered as aberrations or malfunctions of the system but rather traced
|
|
|
back to the daily processes of imprisonment itself (Scott, 2014).
 |
In one of the most radical analyses of SIDs in prison in recent times, Lord Toby Harris (2015), in his official independent inquiry (Box 6. 4), noted that ‘the prison environment is grim, bleak and demoralising to the spirit’. Drawing on the evidence of bereaved prisoner families, prisoners and a wider range of penological experts, the Harris Review (2015) moved beyond the ontological assumptions of the Prison Service and argued that rather than focusing on the individual failings, risks and vulnerabilities of prisoners who have died, we should instead acknowledge that responsibility for such deaths lies with the State. The government response to the report was disappointing, if not unsurprising: 33 of the 108 recommendations of the Harris Review (2015) were rejected outright. Further, only a few months after the publication of the Harris Review (2015) new research was commissioned on SIDs in prison. This invitation for tender (Box 6. 5) asked for researchers to explore once again the relationship between SIDs and individual responsibility, risk factors and mental health, whereas broader concerns about State irresponsibility and structured vio- lence are ignored (Department of Health, 2016).
|
|
|
 |
The Harris Review (Box 6. 4) and DoH Tender (Box 6. 5) are therefore based on different ontologies about prison (i. e. the assumption of the Harris Review that prison is a place of pain and harm that undermines the coping strategies of all prison- ers compared with the assumption of the DoH Tender that prison only poses a life risk for those people that are considered as vulnerable); and about what can be achieved (i. e. the assumption of the Harris Review that as prison is inherently harm- ful the only plausible policy option that can reduce SIDs is to rethink imprisonment and radically reduce the prison population compared with the assumption of the DoH Tender that improved identification of at-risk and vulnerable prisoners, along- side improved training, emergency procedures and better information sharing can reduce SIDs); and different epistemologies (i. e. the generation of knowledge through the view from below and prisoner families in the Harris Review compared with the call by the DoH for research focused on the workings of the current Prison Service policies and practices). This comparison illustrates that how we think about a prob- lem, the questions that are asked and who the informants are can perform a significant part in shaping the conclusions and recommendations of research on the same issue.
|
|
|
