Governors, Staff, and Strategies of Local Adaptation

Abstract

For most prison governors,¹ the idea that they and their staff can be implicated in sustaining crowding and chronic capacity stress (CCS) seems far-fetched. Conventional wisdom says that these are the concerns of ‘high politics’ and decisions way above their pay grade, and that the predicament of governors and staff is to cope with the stresses incurred and make the system work. Clearly, however, governors and staff form an important part of the prison system. Surprisingly, there are signs that they have been under-researched, despite the fact that their roles embody interesting and complex dilemmas of public management.² Governors face challenges of constrained autonomy in much the same way as ministers and senior officials, and their choices and actions are therefore vital components of keeping the prison system as a whole in some kind of manageable and acceptable equilibrium. As Bryans (2007) writes:

There will always be a tension that exists between control from above in the form of rules, regulations, and directives, and the governor’s autonomy, and the need for flexibility and personal influence in managing prisons, because of the very nature of penal institutions. (p. 181)

Mark Twain said that everybody complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it. Overcrowding is a fact of life. We have no control over it. We literally cannot influence it. Occasionally the DG has said things like ‘it’s dangerous’ or ‘we are not able to do our job properly’. We expect them to say those things because that’s a way of getting resources. Our job on the shop floor is to get on and look after people we’ve got as best we can. (Former senior prison governor)