- Title
- Accountability and oversight of state functions : use of volunteers to monitor equality and diversity in prisons in England and Wales
- Creator
- Roffee, James
- Date
- 2017
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/177173
- Identifier
- vital:15251
- Identifier
-
https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017690792
- Identifier
- ISBN:2158-2440 (ISSN)
- Abstract
- This article offers an evaluation of the use of volunteers in providing accountability of state detention in the prison system of England and Wales through a review of their efforts to monitor the humane and just treatment of those held in custody. A content and dialogical analysis was conducted on 280 reports submitted to the Secretary of State to analyze their practice of reporting and monitoring of equality and diversity. The article argues that the use of volunteers is appropriate to performing monitoring functions that act to enhance intelligent accountability, but volunteers are ineffective for the purposes of improving technical accountability. Evidence suggests some role confusion and use of volunteers for the achievement of both intelligent and technical accountability. The use of volunteers for the latter may result in poor quality repetition of other reporting mechanisms. In addition, it is argued that members require better training, and clearer communications concerning expectations from their reporting functions, which in turn is linked to the quality of their monitoring. The volunteers’ monitoring and surveillance of the detention estate can be more than symbolic and may act as a crucial antidote to technical accountability, furthering the humane and just treatment of some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens. © The Author(s) 2017.
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications Inc.
- Relation
- SAGE Open Vol. 7, no. 1 (2017), p.
- Rights
- All metadata describing materials held in, or linked to, the repository is freely available under a CC0 licence
- Rights
- http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
- Rights
- Copyright © The Author(s) 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
- Rights
- Open Access
- Subject
- 1302 Curriculum and Pedagogy; 1608 Sociology; 1699 Other Studies in Human Society; Accountability; Criminology; Diversity; Equality; Prison studies; Punishment; Social change and modernization; Social sciences; Sociology; Volunteers
- Full Text
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