Peer support in prisons: exploring the role and experience of peer-led induction on male prisoners in their transfer and transition to open Prison

For over a century, reports into the conditions of prisons in England and Wales have documented the mental health and wellbeing issues and the experiences of those held within them. These are experienced more acutely during transfer, transition and adaptation to prison. To address the risk of self-harming behaviour and suicide, institutional safer custody strategy has introduced support measures following a prisoner's reception into a prison establishment. Implemented throughout the prison estate in England and Wales, the most prominent intervention is Peer-Led Induction, a power-sharing initiative symbolic of reconfigured power within the prison estate. However, evaluation as to whether this initiative delivers on its aims and objectives is lacking, especially in the context of prison transfer and adaptation to the open prison estate, which itself is an under-researched area. To explore these areas, this thesis collected data through 26 semi-structured interviews, capturing the lived experience of 21 ex-prisoners who experienced Peer-Led Induction in open prison, alongside 5 prison officers involved in the process of Peer-Led Induction. In evaluating the impact of Peer-Led Induction interventions on the wellbeing of adult male prisoners in the early days following transfer, the study established that these processes place considerable strain on the participants' mental health, reconciling them with both historic and contemporary Pains of Imprisonment. The thesis demonstrates that reconfigured penal power through this power-sharing initiative faces structural and organisational impediments surrounding knowledge management and knowledge conversion, though institutional managerialism, ineffective management and resistant staff cultures. The thesis conceptualises these as indicative of 'tick-box cultures' and fulfilment of management, staff and mentor self-serving objectives. The application of power through strategies of 'responsibilisation' demonstrates that a needs-driven approach to induction is lacking; self-serving motivations, paradoxical support, and abuse and misuse of power interact to divert focus from actually helping prisoners. Peer-Led Induction points to 'intervention-itis', penal intervention as a quick fix amongst policy makers, but lacking the theoretical and evaluative foundation needed to meet its intended aims and objectives. In fact, it generates a range of unintended, 'iatrogenic' outcomes, which exacerbate the pain and 'tightness' of imprisonment. The thesis, therefore, explores the role of Programme Theory and its significance in the design, implementation, and delivery of Peer-Led Induction. The thesis can be situated within a framework of policy and intervention change to inform future Peer-Led Induction programmes and wider interventions and to deliver the best mental health and wellbeing outcomes for those men transferring and transitioning to the open estate.