Acknowledging and understanding complexity when providing therapy in prisons

Abstract

This article examines the provision of psychological therapy in prisons in the legal jurisdiction of England and Wales and argues that it is important for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers to acknowledge and understand the complexities involved in therapy provision. Drawing on interviews with clinical psychologists working in prisons in England and Wales, this article explores three contexts of complexity which need to be understood when working therapeutically with prisoners: the wider psychosocial experiences which prisoners import with them into custody; the deprivations of prison life itself; and the interaction between the individual and the prison environment. In order to understand these complexities more effectively, therapists need to be aware of research on this socially excluded group in general and on the effects of imprisonment. Moreover, it is important that therapists act almost as though they are ‘researching’ the broader aspects of the prison in which they work – its setting, its ‘moral performance’, its history and culture. Doing so requires the practitioner to hone skills akin to those of an ‘ethnographic’ prison researcher, so that he or she comes to understand the interaction between the individual prisoner and the systems in which he or she is immersed.