Authors: Paula Shaw, ARTD, Syl Johns, ARTD This session, targeted at intermediate evaluators, explores the ethics of evaluation in the corrections context and the importance of including prisoners’ voices.
Incarcerated people are (almost by definition) excluded from public discourse. Our criminal justice system offers imprisonment; a deprivation of liberty, which includes severe restrictions on a person’s ability to communicate with the outside world, as its most common consequence for committing a crime.
Since the mid-20th century, when prisons were re-imagined as places of rehabilitation over places of punishment, criminogenic programs that aim to address the underlying causes of crime have been part of prisons’ remit. Prisoners themselves are arguably the key stakeholders in these kinds of programs, and yet, their voices are often absent in evaluation and other research and program development activities.
Prisons, as a context for program delivery and evaluation, are highly regulated and complex environments. Across Australia, prisons are chronically overcrowded and hold populations with very high levels of complex needs, disadvantage and trauma. First Nations Australians are also overrepresented.
Over the last five years, the presenters, (ARTD Associate Uncle Syl Johns, and Senior Manager, Paula Shaw) have worked on several evaluations of criminogenic programs, and between them, have interviewed well over 100 prisoners across Qld, and in SA, NSW, Victoria, WA and the NT. This session will be delivered as brief presentations and facilitated group discussions on each of the topics below:
•The ethics of inclusion of prisoners in evaluation projects – why it matters, what are the power dynamics at play, what are the risks for prisoners, and what do they get out of it? •The formal ethics processes involved – what are the key considerations? •Learnings from our work about practical approaches to engaging prisoners in evaluation interviews. – What has worked well? What hasn’t – and why?
