The Legitimacy of Trust

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the varying power bases utilised by prison officers towards prisoners within the carceral space. The author combines lived experience, youth justice practice, and research to illustrate how prison officers can develop best practices and cultivate relational approaches with prisoners. Evaluating how legitimacy and trust play a significant role in developing a rehabilitative culture within prisons that can impact on stubbornly high reoffending rates in England and Wales. Drawing on this unique vantage point of living in and working on both sides of the justice and incarceration sphere, the author provides an authoritative contribution to prison reform, desistance, and rehabilitation literature. Finally, capitalising on these unique and dynamic relational experiences to present a set of key principles – presence, attunement, and connection that can enable prison officers to increase the likelihood of developing trusting relationships with prisoners in their care. Utilising real-life examples of how prison officers can often provide hope required for desistance within what has been often described as the pains of imprisonment.