Therapy in Prisons

1. Therapy in Prisons Professor Graham Towl Durham University

2. Session overview • 1. The marketplace • 2.New Public Management • 3. Partnerships • 4. User perspectives

3. The marketplace • Regulation and power • Conflation of psychology and therapy • Conflation of psychology and psychologists • Manualisation • Psychometrics industry • Manualisation • Franchising – the KFCing of therapy

4. New Public Management • Importation of private sector management practices and processes into the public sector for greater efficiencies. • As much an ideology as a set of management techniques • Measurement of therapy through attendance rather than engagement, outputs or outcomes.

5. New Public Management • Influential in therapeutic work in prisons because therapy framed within management structures. • Therapy as ‘management’ • Therapy as a mechanistic process. • Therapy as a method of influence or control – e.g. reducing reoffending.

6. Partnerships • Eclectic range of partners to contribute to doing therapy. • Addressing needs through partnerships; nutrition, employment, accommodation, drug and alcohol misuse and mental health matters. • Cultural as much as functional.

7. User Perspectives • Shift from assessments to help. • Dispense with professional gate keeping. • User roles in therapy