There are numerous personal accounts and positive programme evaluations of the rehabilitative and transformative power of painting, poetry, football, running, educational attainment and peer mentoring – all of which can be classified as ‘positive’ and ‘strengths-based’ activities and interventions – in numerous different prisons in numerous different countries. Almost all prisons have programmes of education and programmes that can be classified as promoting a rehabilitative culture. Some of these are even evaluated externally to assess whether and to what extent they can be said to ‘work’. However, little of this evaluation attempts to examine the sustainability or capacity-building of this work. Based on our discussion of three strengths-based programmes in the United Kingdom (UK) adult prison establishment, some clues emerge about what could arise as a two-tiered approach to the evaluation of strengths-based projects, based on proximal effectiveness and longitudinal impact on culture and practice. The paper concludes with an overview of common metrics of strengths-based innovations and programmes which may lead to increased credibility and investment in times of austerity.
Security is one of the fundamental needs in society for both individuals and organisations. Delivering security and consequences of those modes have stimulated some significant academic debates and research. However, applied security, particularly the performance of security tools and effectiveness of security systems, in comparison to other disciplines, has been under-researched. An engineer, a medical doctor, a human resources specialist would have a substantial body of knowledge to consult when examining the different ‘tools’ of their trade and the merits of their use vis-a-vis a security manager. Given the importance of security in prisons one might expect this might be an exception in the broader field of security studies; but here again there is a sparse base of scholarship. There is a body or research that investigates the culture of the prison, which considers the nature of security, exemplified by Sykes seminal work. Some of the sparse research which exists, is listed next to some important security issues:
