Psychologists as ‘the quiet ones with the power’: understanding indeterminate sentenced prisoners’ experiences of psychological risk assessment in the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

Prisoners serving indeterminate sentences in the United Kingdom do not know when or if they will be released from prison. Release and progression decisions are determined by the risk the ISP presents of reoffending. This makes the assessment of risk a high stakes business for ISPs. Whilst there is a large body of literature focused on prisoners’ general experiences of prison, there is an absence of specific empirical exploration of prisoners’ experiences of risk assessment. This paper aims to address this gap by reporting the results of a qualitative exploration of ISPs’ experiences of psychological risk assessment. Interviews with 10 ISPs were conducted and analysed using Grounded Theory methods. Analysis indicated that prisoners experienced the prison environment as characterised by violence, volatility and suffering. Psychological risk assessment is embedded within this emotionally and physically challenging context but also contributes to the experience of suffering. Within this context, prisoners felt stuck, powerless and out of control in relation to risk assessment, and experienced psychologists as untrustworthy yet powerful. Understanding prisoners’ experiences is the first step in resolving some of the long-reported difficulties in working relationships between psychologists and prisoners as well as making the process more procedurally just.

KEYWORDS:

• Risk assessment
• indeterminate sentence
• prisoners
• psychological assessment
• grounded theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In the United States the equivalent sentence is ‘life sentence with the possibility of parole’.

2 The exception to this is prisoners who are given a ‘whole life’ tariff, and who will consequently never be released from prison. At the end of December 2018 there were 63 whole life prisoners in England and Wales comprising around 0.7% of the total population of indeterminate sentenced prisoners (Ministry of Justice, 2019).

3 Whilst the Parole Board makes a direction for release that cannot be overturned, it is only permitted to make a recommendation for transfer to open prison conditions. Such a recommendation can be overturned by the Secretary of State.

4 More details about the nature of indeterminate sentences can be found at https://www.justice.gov.uk/offenders/types-of-offender/life.

5 Prisoner recruitment was dependent on local procedures and permissions. In Prison 1, local staff provided us with a list of men who met the inclusion criteria, from which we randomly selected five men to contact in writing to invite to participate. Three men agreed to participate; the remaining two did not reply. In Prison 2, a local manager asked staff to provide names of potential participants who met the inclusion criteria. The first author met the seven men identified and all agreed to participate.

6 Prisoners are given a security category depending on their likelihood of escape, and the risk they are considered to present to prison staff and other prisoners. Category B prisons are for prisoners who do not need the highest level of security but ‘..for whom escape must be made very difficult’ (Ministry of Justice [MOJ], 2011, p. 6). Category C prisons are for ‘ … prisoners who cannot be trusted in open conditions but who do not have the resources and will to make a determined escape attempt’ (ibid).

7 Category D prisons are for prisoners who present a low risk and ‘ … whom can be reasonably trusted no to abscond’ (MOJ, 2011). There were no Category D prisoners in the research sample.

8 The transcription conventions used are available from the first author on request.

9 Each pseudonym is used consistently to refer to the same participant both in this paper and in other publications arising from the larger project.

10 Crawley (2004) similarly suggests that working in prisons results in prison officers supressing feelings of concern and compassion for prisoners. This would imply that the prison environment itself has an impact on emotional expression, rather than this being solely a psychological characteristic of some prisoners.

11 John was also one of only two participants who had never been in prison prior to his current conviction and indeterminate sentence. This may help to explain why he was more able to retain a sense of his non-prisoner role/identity.

12 Interestingly, Grove et al. (2000) suggested that bias might be a reason for clinical judgement not outperforming mechanical procedures, but did not make any comment about whether clinical judgement tended to result in false positive or more false negative predictions. Their commentary, pointing to the tendency in clinicians to overlook base rates, and their vulnerability to the representativeness and availability heuristics (see also Ireland, 2004) might suggest that clinicians are more vulnerable to false positives – predicting recidivism which does not occur.