‘Our Core Business’: Prison Managers, Hard Performance Monitoring and Managerialism

Abstract

This chapter is the first of two that present and analyse the empirical research on the use of performance management measures and their place in the contemporary prison. Together they attempt to understand how individuals make sense of and interact with the various competing forces that play upon them, including local traditions and practices such as occupational cultures, as well as global changes such as the growth of managerial practices. This study is particularly interested in the negotiation of the dualities of global and local, agency and structure, and the ways in which they enable and constrain prison managers.