ABSTRACT
Since studying desistance, I have often looked back at my time in Wealstun open in relation to my own theories about how prisons should adopt a desistance working model. As I wrote in my PhD thesis, prisons have been actively involved in the process of desistance for decades within their open estates and therefore, this chapter explores open prisons in relation to their desistance approaches but also the overlooked links between open prisons and the “pains of imprisonment” using Sykes’ theory. Other than the most recent contribution from Mjåland and colleagues with their comparisons of open prisons in England and Wales and Norway, there has been barely any empirical research around links between open prisons and deprivations. Alarmingly there has also been little empirical research about open prisons and desistance since Maguire and Raynor published their paper in 2006: “How the resettlement of prisoners promotes desistance from crime: Or does it?”
