An Appreciative Inquiry into the response to diversity in three Yorkshire Prisons

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Responding to diversity within the prisons setting is a complex and challenging process and HM Prison Service is still developing and refining its national policy framework to ensure that its responsibilities under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act (2000), the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) and the new Equalities Act (2010) are met. Within this wider framework each individual prison is required to develop their own local policy framework to promote equality and reduce discrimination in relation to seven 'protected characteristics' of diversity; age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnerhip and pregnancy and maternity (MOJ, 2011). The present research builds on a previous ESRC funded pilot project undertaken by the researchers which aimed to develop and test a methodology for exploring the response to diversity in prisons. It aims to employ the methodology more widely within the Prison Service to develop a body of knowledge about the response to diversity using three prisons from the Yorkshire region as case studies. The choice of sites is influenced by the need to capture the experiences of prisoners and prison staff across a range of different security categories and types of prison and includes; HMP Wakefield, a maximum-security prison accommodating adult male prisoners convicted of very serious offences, serving long sentences and who may continue to pose a risk to others (including prison staff, other prisoners and, if they were to escape, the general public); HMP Leeds, a 'Local/Remand' prison accommodating adult male prisoners awaiting court appearances, prisoners awaiting allocation to other prisons and prisoners serving short sentences; and HMP Lindholme, a Category C prison accommodating prisoners, over the age of 21,allocated a relatively low security category. The population includes prisoners serving life sentences who may have served a substantial period of their sentence elsewhere and prisoners serving shorter sentences. The three year research project will illustrate:o how prisoners in diverse minority groupings experience the diversity policies and procedures in place at each establishment,o which aspects of policies, procedures and practices in each prison are perceived by minority groups to promote feelings of respect and well-being,o how prison staff experience the policies and procedures that guide their practice with prisoners from diverse minority groupings, and,o ways in which diversity policies, procedures and practices in each prison could be improved to promote a greater feeling of respect and well-being in minority groups.It will also explore and develop theories of intersectionality as a way of understanding how people experience prison life. Commonly, aspects of personhood such as ethnicity, religion, and sexuality are deemed to be distinct aspects of experience which determine the political, social and economic dynamics of oppression. Theories of intersectionality recognise these aspects as commonly overlaying one another, creating complex intersections at which several aspects may meet. They can address the ways in which policies and the actions of those implementing policies can operate together to create discrimination and disempowerment, and offer a means of accounting for the ways in which forms of discrimination structure the relative positions of people of diverse minorities. These aims will be met combining four stages of data collection: an appreciative ethnography of the relationship between official diversity policies and procedures and the knowledge and practices of staff, interviews with prisoners' representative of diverse minority groupings from all wings of each prison, a survey of all prisoners in each prison, focus groups with staff from the residential wings and other departments across each prison.