Doing Prison Work in Australia and Norway
Instrumental and Relational Security in Countries of Penal Excess and Exceptionalism
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing:12th Nov '26
£85.00
This title is due to be published on 12th November, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Examines the larger conceptual framework of Nordic Exceptionalism and Anglophone Excess through narratives emerging from staff and prisoners in Australia and Norway.
What does prison work actually do - and what kind of prison does it produce?
In Doing Prison Work in Australia and Norway, Anna Eriksson argues that prisons are not defined primarily by their architecture, regimes, or policies, but by the everyday practices of those who work within them. Drawing on extensive comparative research across Australia and Norway, the book shows how prison staff actively shape the meaning and experience of punishment through their interactions, decisions, and use of authority.
At the centre of the analysis is a new conceptual distinction between instrumental security and relational security. While instrumental approaches emphasise control, distance, and compliance, relational approaches are grounded in communication, proximity, and professional judgement. Eriksson demonstrates that these are not simply individual styles, but are embedded in wider penal cultures, organisational structures, and the underlying aims of imprisonment.
By rethinking prison work as the core mechanism through which punishment is enacted, the book offers a fresh perspective on longstanding debates about penal excess and Nordic exceptionalism. It shows how different systems produce fundamentally different forms of prison life - not only for prisoners, but for staff themselves.
Bringing together rich empirical insight with clear conceptual innovation, Doing Prison Work speaks directly to both scholars and practitioners. For academics, it advances a new framework for understanding prison culture and penal power. For practitioners and policymakers, it offers concrete insights into how staff practices shape safety, legitimacy, and the possibility of change within prisons.
Ultimately, this book makes a simple but powerful claim: to change the prison, we must understand - and rethink - the work that happens inside it.
This is a timely book of fundamental importance for scholars and practitioners alike. It places all the key challenges and possibilities of prisons and prison work firmly on the contemporary agenda. Above all, Eriksson shows convincingly that social problems require deep and sustained interactions among humans (“people-work”) and that “paperwork” or deference to technology are poor proxies for such. This book will stand the test of time and help to recast the collective role of correctional workers and inmates in the pursuit of building better lives within and beyond prison. -- Mark Halsey, Flinders University, Australia
In this book Anna Eriksson shares so much insight into prison work in Australia and Norway. No one is better placed to write this book, offering a rich comparative analysis that is as deep and sophisticated as it is empathetic. A masterpiece. -- Francis Pakes, University of Portsmouth, UK
Doing Prison Work in Australia and Norway is a very significant contribution to our understanding of prisons and a major achievement. Focussing on staff cultures and orientations, it offers an account that is both granular and comparative, illuminating cross-national differences in the philosophy and practice of imprisonment. -- Ben Crewe, University of Cambridge, UK
Aiming to explore and nuance the Nordic exceptionalism thesis, Anna Eriksson presents a respectful, insightful, and richly detailed empirical study of the prison’s principal cultural carriers: its staff. The book is highly readable and a valuable addition to the small body of literature on prison personnel. -- Berit Johnsen, KRUS, Norway
This is an important and timely book showing how different penal values are enacted in prison work in ‘exceptional-relational’ Norway and ‘excessive-estranged’ Australia. We learn more about how penal philosophies are lived, sustained, and sometimes strained. The author shows how penal states choose between perpetual risk or potential change. -- Alison Liebling, University of Cambridge, UK
ISBN: 9781350572256
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
220 pages