ABSTRACT
There are currently over 83,000 people in prison in England and Wales, nearly 4,000 of whom are women (Ministry of Justice, 2019). Our prisons and other places of youth detention also currently hold over 800 children aged 17 and under (Youth Custody Service, 2019). Although by their very nature, prisons are closed institutions, what takes place in our prisons is a public concern: not only because they are funded from the public purse and represent the state’s decision to deprive an individual of their liberty, but because the way in which our prisons are resourced, organised and managed has an impact on reoffending and the safety of our communities. Almost a half of adults and over 70% of children released from prison will reoffend within a year (Ministry of Justice & National Statistics, 2019) and the total annual estimated economic and social cost of reoffending has been estimated by the Ministry of Justice to be £18.1 billion (Newton, May, Eames & Ahmad, 2019). Now more than ever our discipline of psychology needs to lend itself to this issue of enormous social and political concern.
