The human prison? from hierarchy and roles to insistance on complexity and fluidity

TY - CONF

T1 - The human prison?

T2 - from hierarchy and roles to insistance on complexity and fluidity

AU - Knudsen, Hanne

AU - Mathiassen, Charlotte

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - In the paper we analyze a learning and culture development project in Danish prisons. The ambition of the project is to create change in a complex world. The prison officers are invited to make experiments in order to create a more ‘human’ prison. We see the project as an intervention in the professionalism of the officers with the implicit goal of making them responsible for the continuous questioning of their own role and the prison as an organization. The course continually opens and postpones a fixed picture of the organization. We discuss whether this course is an extreme example of general tendencies in the public sector; the tendency to question the institution and the employee’s role as a point of departure for change, and to break down the distinction between professional and citizen.

AB - In the paper we analyze a learning and culture development project in Danish prisons. The ambition of the project is to create change in a complex world. The prison officers are invited to make experiments in order to create a more ‘human’ prison. We see the project as an intervention in the professionalism of the officers with the implicit goal of making them responsible for the continuous questioning of their own role and the prison as an organization. The course continually opens and postpones a fixed picture of the organization. We discuss whether this course is an extreme example of general tendencies in the public sector; the tendency to question the institution and the employee’s role as a point of departure for change, and to break down the distinction between professional and citizen.

UR - https://www.abdn.ac.uk/munros/documents/ISA_RC52_Milan2015_Final_Program.pdf

M3 - Paper

ER -