Examining Prison Discourse: Extending ‘Discourse, Power and Justice’ to Front-Line Prison Officers

Adler and Longhurst’s classic study of prison management in Scotland significantly advanced our understanding of the internal dynamics of the penal institution. Turning, as they did, the academic lens towards the ‘powerful in preference to the poor’, they extended into an innovative sociological terrain, providing the groundwork for a succinct conceptualisation of the conflicts and complexities of pressures at the heart of the institutional matrix. Here it is argued that Adler and Longhurst’s analysis may be further adapted to enquire even deeper into the institution; to specifically focus on the discourses of power employed by prison officers on the ground. To this effect, it is suggested that the matrices developed in Discourse, Power and Justice can be usefully modified and extended to account for both the formal and the informal patterns of discourse and accountability inherent in the daily interactions of front-line prison officers. Such an extension, it is argued, will contribute to the bridging of the macro–micro divide by broadening our understanding of the means by which state bureaucratic power is translated into institutional action.