The Prisons Research Group (PRG) at Middlesex University brings together staff and students to critically examine prison reform issues and debates in the context of ambitions for change, transformative prison rehabilitation and supported reintegration on release.
The Middlesex University Prisons Research Group (PRG) was established in 2016. It brings staff and students together to critically examine prisons issues and debates and the range of intersecting topics that arise through crime and offending contexts and key institutional justice system responses (ie. police, courts, sentencing, community-based punishment and probation) Our research is underpinned by principles of social justice, humanity and inclusivity with an interest in considering how these do and do not relate to justice processes, policy and practice.
The PRG is made up of staff conducting rigorous independent research. Our studies are empirically driven and based on lived real experiences, as well as grounded in theoretical thought. Staff are engaged in in-depth qualitative research, large-scale quantitative surveys, and programme intervention evaluation research. Research is conducted as funded and unfunded enquiry, and as both exploratory and evidence-based studies. We foster and facilitate links with academics at other universities and with colleagues working in criminal justice professional practice and among staff and managers of prison establishments. Our research ideas and design are interdisciplinary and strengthened by the faculty subjects of law, psychology, social policy, social work and mental health practice at Middlesex University.
Our London location interests us in London-specific prison issues and staff are involved in examining the closure of London prisons, such as HMP Holloway women’s prison and the impact of this on prison staff, the prisoners, their children and families, and community integration on release.
We have prison research experience in a range of areas, including: prison drugs policy; the limitations of short prison sentences and value in community-based alternatives; youth custody and care; management of offenders with Personality Disorder (DSPD); research on drugs market organisation with people imprisoned on supply charges; examination of self-inflicted deaths in custody, and; theories of another course of action to prisons. Much of our criminal justice-focused research overlaps with punishment and imprisonment issues.
We have held several prison roundtable events, with a range of informative speakers, please look at the events section of this website for information and links to podcasts taken from the day.
Contact Jenni Ward for any enquiries.
Senior Lecturer in Psychology
Professor in Decision Psychology
Professor in Criminology
Professor
Senior Lecturer in Media Narrative
Professor of Human Rights Law
Theme Director/Professor in Psychology
Professor Sociology
Senior Lecturer in Criminology
