| The paper reports the interim results of a collaborative project between 'Partners of Prisoners' and the Home Office. The project is designed to improve prisons' performance in 2 key areas: confronting racial harassment and discrimination; and ensuring equal opportunities for ethnic minority prisoners. This is achieved by use of a questionnaire which surveys prisoners' full experiences of both direct and indirect racism and discrimination. For each prison, the evaluators produce an 'action list' of areas requiring policy and practice changes, based on the survey results. The 'Partners of Prisoners' team then draw up an action plan in consultation with the prison managers and negotiate putting the plan into practice. The same prisons are re-surveyed and analysed for significant reductions in key areas of discrimination which can then be associated with the 'best practices' formulated in the action plan. This is the first time that this 'what works' approach has been used in this context anywhere in the world and the results and their implications for prison management will have a wide application. |
Updated 05/20/2006