03/08/2022
Police Oracle
If you are interested in the latest penal research, then the Prison Service Journal should be top of your list. The PSJ (as it is widely known) is a peer reviewed journal published by HM Prison Service of England and Wales.
Its purpose is to “promote discussion on issues related to the work of the Prison Service, the wider criminal justice system and associated fields”. The Journal is published every two months at HMP Leyhill and is sent to every Prison Service establishment in England and Wales. Staff don’t have to subscribe and can obtain free copies from their establishment.
What makes the PSJ such a valuable resource is that, unlike most research journals, every edition is free to download online. It is hosted by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and you can find it here.
But the other thing that makes the Journal great is that it attracts bespoke articles on the latest prison research from leading academics. Most issues have a guiding theme and the current edition, published earlier this week, is particularly fascinating. The entire journal focuses on life imprisonment and is guest edited by Dr Susie Hulley and Dr Serena Wright. Together with Professor Ben Crewe, Drs Hulley and Wright are involved in a fascinating longitudinal study of people serving terms of life imprisonment, both in custody and on release.
The research is particularly important because while there have, of course, always been lifers in prison, the number of people serving them and the length of life sentences have both grown exponentially over the last 50 years.
The number of people given life sentences (including whole life orders – which are, exactly as they sound, prison sentences from which people will never be released ) has grown substantially and people doing life are spending considerably longer in custody. At the end of the 1960s, less than 500 men were serving life imprisonment, and only two men had been in custody for a continuous period of more than 15 years. Comparatively, by 2020, almost 7,000 people were serving life sentences across England and Wales, half of whom were given minimum tariffs of 10-20 years, with a further third given tariffs of at least 20 years. This reflects a very recent and very rapid increase in the average minimum tariff imposed by judges for murder, which rose from 12.5 years, in 2003, to 21.1 years in 2013.
These changes to the life sentenced population have considerable implications not only for individuals serving life sentences and their loved ones, but for HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) and third sector organisations who support them. For HMPPS, these implications include the need to support the growing number of young life sentence prisoners entering prison while simultaneously managing the needs of older lifers who remain in custody for longer periods, as well as responding to the needs of the increasing number of families affected by long-term imprisonment.
This special issue of the Prison Service Journal addresses these and other pertinent issues and draws on the expertise of a range of practitioners, academics and experts by lived experience.
The articles in the Journal cover a wide range of these issues including:
All these articles are a hard read, not because the prose is difficult (the PSJ tends to be written in plain English rather than academic jargon) but because they force the reader to imagine being a lifer, often with no definite date of release.
If you work with lifers, you may life to read this special edition of the PSJ which can be downloaded for free here.