Chronic Capacity Stress: A Complex Condition

Abstract

When the experienced governor of a large local prison tells you that you have to go back to 1877 to get to the roots of the problem of prison crowding, it is a pretty clear indication that the issues that you are dealing with have something chronic about them. In that year, the Prison Commission was established, marking what is widely seen as the beginning of the modern-era prison system in England and Wales. The implication is that as the system has grown into a large and centralized modern bureaucracy, it has also become somehow less able to do the things necessary to impact positively and effectively on the lives of prisoners. Blaming the best part of 150 years of public administrative change for sub-optimality in today’s prison system is perhaps one of the more outlandish examples in this book of fatalistic response. Nevertheless, it illustrates nicely the kind of potentially paradoxical dynamics that can be found at the heart of a large and complex public-policy system.