‘Violence is all he knew, and it seemed to work’: using the power threat meaning framework to explore prison officers’ understandings of violence in Irish prisons

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 2018 the Irish Prison Service (IPS) opened the National Violence Reduction Unit (NVRU), becoming home to all prisoners managed under the Violently Disruptive Prisoner (VDP) policy, who were repeatedly engaged in serious violence in prison. Embedded in the NVRU is a joint operational-psychological approach, aiming to understanding the violence of these prisoners, and work with them to reduce it. This study explored NVRU prison officers’ understandings of the origins, experiences and expressions of the violence of NVRU prisoners, through the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF). Prison officers (n = 13) participated in semi-structured interviews at two time-points: 6 months after the NVRU opening (n = 13), and 12 months after the NVRU opening (n = 11). From these aggregated transcripts (n = 24), 6 themes were identified: (1) power, (2) threat, (3) meaning, (4) threat response, (5) function of threat response, and (6) moderating factors. Prison officers confirmed many a priori elements of the existing provisional PTMF, whilst also contributing novel elements related to their subjective understandings of this specific cohort. These findings are interpreted in the context of existing empirical research. Implications for future research, and policy and practice within and beyond the NVRU, are suggested.