Transcript Therapy in Prisons

Therapy in Prisons
Professor Graham Towl
Durham University
Session overview
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1. The marketplace
2.New Public Management
3. Partnerships
4. User perspectives
The marketplace
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Regulation and power
Conflation of psychology and therapy
Conflation of psychology and psychologists
Manualisation
Psychometrics industry
Manualisation
Franchising – the KFCing of therapy
New Public Management
• Importation of private sector management
practices and processes into the public sector
for greater efficiencies.
• As much an ideology as a set of management
techniques
• Measurement of therapy through attendance
rather than engagement, outputs or
outcomes.
New Public Management
• Influential in therapeutic work in prisons
because therapy framed within management
structures.
• Therapy as ‘management’
• Therapy as a mechanistic process.
• Therapy as a method of influence or control –
e.g. reducing reoffending.
Partnerships
• Eclectic range of partners to contribute to
doing therapy.
• Addressing needs through partnerships;
nutrition, employment, accommodation, drug
and alcohol misuse and mental health
matters.
• Cultural as much as functional.
User Perspectives
• Shift from assessments to help.
• Dispense with professional gate keeping.
• User roles in therapy