Penal Policy on Families of Imprisoned People—An Impossible Situation? Understanding Scottish Prison Policy Through Prison Staff's Moral Sensibilities.
Scottish penal policy emphasizes the rights and well-being of the families of imprisoned people, yet reports suggest persistent gaps between discourse and practice. This paper examines prison staff's moral sensibilities regarding families. Using Zacka's Street-Level Bureaucracy framework, it links s...
| Published in: | British Journal of Criminology Vol. 66; no. 3; pp. 536 - 554 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Oxford University Press / USA
May2026
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=193095195&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 193095195 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00070955 BJC jtl: British Journal of Criminology issn: 00070955 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: May2026 vid: 66 iid: 3 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 193095195 10.1093/bjc/azaf054 ppf: 536 ppct: 18 formats: tig: atl: Penal Policy on Families of Imprisoned People—An Impossible Situation? Understanding Scottish Prison Policy Through Prison Staff's Moral Sensibilities. aug: au: Wolkind, Rikki su: Prison administration Public officers Criminal justice policy Ethical problems sug: subj: Prison administration Public officers Criminal justice policy Commercial and Institutional Building Construction Correctional Institutions Ethical problems keyword: copyrightHolder:Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (formerly ISTD) copyrightYear:2026 families inLanguage:en moral sensibilities penal policymaking publisher:Oxford University Press sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaf054 sociology of punishment copyrightHolder:Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (formerly ISTD) copyrightYear:2026 families inLanguage:en moral sensibilities penal policymaking publisher:Oxford University Press sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaf054 sociology of punishment ab: Scottish penal policy emphasizes the rights and well-being of the families of imprisoned people, yet reports suggest persistent gaps between discourse and practice. This paper examines prison staff's moral sensibilities regarding families. Using Zacka's Street-Level Bureaucracy framework, it links staff moral distress to a misalignment between policy aspirations to support families and other institutional policies and characteristics that, in practice, harm them. Through this analysis, I recast the gap between discourse and practice not as an implementation issue, but as a consequence of moral incoherence in the state's position on families which, left unresolved upstream, is effectively delegated to prison staff. The paper has implications for penal policymaking and prison governance and advances a methodological argument for prison staff-focused research as a form of policy analysis. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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