Offender and/or client? Fuzzy institutional identities in prison-based drug treatment in Denmark

Abstract

The last 20 years has witnessed a rise in prison-based drug treatment in Nordic countries. This increase has challenged the prominence of the punitive prison, and created changes in the roles of both clients and staff. This article explores the development of two institutional inmate identities: the offender and the client, which have occurred as a consequence of this shift in prison policy. However, in their institutional narratives and daily practice both prison officers and counsellors often fluctuate when addressing inmates as offenders and/or clients. This fluctuation creates a “fuzzy” dynamic. These institutional identities are characterized, on the one hand, by inmates being dealt with by counsellors as ‘real people' and ‘equals’, but simultaneously counsellors are resorting to the control opportunities allowed by the prison authorities such as urine tests and the use of isolation cells. On the other hand, prison officers handle inmates within a disciplinary logic, while concurrently dealing with them as inmates deserving a fair chance – a view resonant with the drug treatment ideology applied in prisons.

Keywords

clients institutional identities offenders prison-based drug treatment

Introduction

During the last 20 years, there has been a marked increase in prison-based drug treatment (PDT) in the Nordic countries (Kolind et al., 2012; Nylander et al., 2012; Tourunen et al., 2012) as well as in other European countries (Seddon et al., 2012; Stöver and Michels, 2010). In some respects, this development indicates a re-emergence of the previously abandoned treatment ideology, also termed the penal-welfare regime (Garland, 2001). The relatively sudden growth in PDT can be seen as a response to increased drug use among prisoners during this period.¹ Nevertheless, it should be remembered that national data on drug use in prison is rare and often not directly comparable (Cools et al., 2009). With the rise of PDT, prisons increasingly seek to identify and treat prisoners’ personal problems, thus re-inventing themselves as modern welfare institutions trying to solve a social problem, in this case, the drug problem. Such a ‘criminalization of drug policy’ (Duke, 2006; Seddon et al., 2012), whereby social problems are increasingly treated within a penal regime and where the welfare state implicitly becomes a penal state (for instance when drug problems are (re)framed as crime problems), tends to create a dilemma whereby prisoners with drug problems are at once offenders and social welfare clients within the penal regime (see also Lyons, 2013). It has been argued that the rise of PDT and the presence of treatment-oriented staff inside prison walls may push prison practices toward more ‘neo-paternalism’ or ‘soft power’, with prisoners being subject to neo-liberal strategies of empowerment and less to traditional, hard authoritarian power (Crewe, 2011). In line herewith, PDT can legitimise the often less prestigious part of officers work, termed ‘emotional labour’ (Crawley, 2004; Nylander et al., 2011). This argument is supported by findings showing that prison officers and counsellors are often at odds with each other when drug treatment programmes are implemented and may even attempt to impede each other’s work (Kolind et al., 2010; Mair and Barton, 2001; McIntosh and Saville, 2006). Over time, however, and as our study will show, it may be that they begin to value each other’s work in the general operation of everyday life in prison.

In line with this argument, but on a more general level, we will argue that the rise of PDT has generated new institutional identities in Danish prisons: The inmate is no longer only an offender but is increasingly also seen as a client expected to participate actively in his or her own (drug) rehabilitation. This view is also articulated in the governmental political discourse on inmates’ rights and the articulation of inmates as users/consumers of welfare services, e.g. in regard to drug or alcohol treatment or anger management (Kolind et al., 2012). In this article, we will first investigate how these new institutional identities, the ‘client’ and the ‘offender’ respectively, can be analysed as central characters in the institutional narratives (Sandberg, 2010) of drug counsellors and prison officers. We then discuss how such ideal narrative characters appear rather fuzzy in both counsellors’ and prison officers’ narratives and in their everyday practices. In fact, the construction and availability of divergent institutional identities, clients and offenders, open a space where inmates can simultaneously be viewed as both offenders and clients. Our focus on the articulation of institutional identities is not concerned with how clients see themselves. Rather, we focus on the staffs’ institutional narratives about inmates and their personal problems and the institutional responses towards these. That is, the more or less shared staff narratives that seek to understand inmate problems and channel responses towards these.

Offenders and clients in institutional identity perspective

Our analysis is inspired from research on institutional narratives and institutional identities (Brookman et al., 2011; Gubrium and Holstein, 2001; Holstein and Miller, 2007; Järvinen and Andersen, 2009; Presser, 2009) and by the work by Donohue and Moore (2009) and Moore (2007) on ‘the offender’ and ‘the client’ enacted as divergent identities in the criminal justice system.

These research perspectives focus on how institutions construct social problems and understand troubled selves (Loseke, 2007, Valentine, 2007). A key insight of this research is that when institutions aim at fixing and identifying troubled selves, a double process is operating. On the one hand, institutionally embedded practices and constructions of troubled persons are related to larger discursive practices of the welfare state, such as classifications of certain kinds of people as healthy or unhealthy, normal or pathological, productive or unproductive, illegal drug (ab)users or legal users (Hacking, 1999; Presser, 2004). Differentiating people into ‘kinds of people’ can produce common-sensical categories over time. However, such classification processes do not simply reflect objective descriptions of reality ‘out there’. They also constitute what is understood as social problems in need of intervention (Brookman et al., 2011; Presser, 2004). For instance, people who use illegal drugs and engage in criminal activities are generally understood as troubled individuals in need of both help and correction. In this sense, societal discursive representations form a backdrop for how the social authorities act upon certain kinds of troubles and social problems (Jöhncke, 2009; Sandberg, 2009).

On the other hand, “social problems work”² and the construction of troubled selves are also strongly related to context. That is, institutional identities are constructed in specific organizations and are tied to the concrete practices of institutional actors as well as to a limited space of possibilities. For instance, treatment services will always be limited in resources, so client problems are constructed so that they fit institutionally available interventions (Järvinen and Miller, 2010; Valentine, 2007). The concept of institutional identities should be understood in relation to how institutional responses and practices transform the problems of its clients into ‘more or less distinct troubled identities that match the working logic of the treatment system’ (Järvinen and Andersen, 2009: 865). Taking this point of departure, troubles and the lives of troubled individuals (including the circumstances that led inmates into troubles) are understood and acted upon in relation to organizationally and institutionally recognizable identities (Gubrium and Holstein, 2001; Holstein and Miller 2007; Järvinen and Andersen 2009; Loseke, 2001).

In the present analysis, this means that prison officers and counsellors work with institutional images of typical inmates. Such images frame their understanding of what make up these inmates’ problems and needs. Even though inmates participating in PDT have multiple problems, e.g. lack of education, lack of job experience, disruptive family backgrounds, criminal activities, etc. the responses towards these diverse problems tend to sort and represent them through a certain institutional understanding of what kind of person the institution is dealing with. Through the logic of institutional identity, inmates’ diverse social problems exist because they are substance abusers. Recognizable institutional identities, i.e. the ‘criminal drug abuser’, are in this sense used to explain the circumstances that lead inmates into troubles. In our analysis, we focus on such institutional identities. Our attention then, is not so much on individual narratives, but on the more or less shared staff narratives that encapsulate inmate problems and channel their responses towards these (Sandberg, 2010).

With the rise of PDT and the accompanying institutional identification of inmates in need of help, it is our argument, and in line with Donohue and Moore (2009), that the institutional identity of the ‘offender’ (the traditional inmate identity), now increasingly coexists with the ‘client’ in need of therapeutic attention (see also Fox, 2001: 179; Waldram, 2007). Donohue and Moore (2009: 330) argue that:

An offender is not an offender when she is identified as needy and is motivated to address her needs by accepting help and engaging with CJS [criminal justice system] based services designed to help her help herself. She is not an offender when she has the right to be treated, to be served. She is not an offender when the people she is dealing with are not her punishers but rather her therapists, service providers and friends.

However, contrary to Donohue and Moore (2009) who see ‘offender’ and ‘client’ as more or less mutually excluding institutional identities, we will also pay attention to how these narratively constructed institutional identities are oscillating, dependent on the situations and contexts in question.

Our perspective implies that institutional narratives can be analysed as the way prison officers and counsellors use and construct institutional images or ‘formula stories’ of typical inmates. Formula stories are “narratives of typical actors engaging in typical behaviour” (Brookman et al., 2011: 398). In this way, formula stories (or institutional narratives) frame how the problems and needs of clients are understood and acted upon, hereby sorting out people into institutional identities in “organizational settings” (Järvinen and Andersen, 2009: 867).

By focusing on institutional narratives or formula stories, we are able to analyse first, how drug counsellors and prison officers, respectively, differ in their approaches towards inmates, inmates’ problems and how these should be acted upon. Especially, we focus on different narratives related to change and development, e.g. are inmates seen as ‘just doing time’ or are they ‘participating actively in drug treatment’. These different approaches make up what we term the institutional identities of the offender and the client. Second, some officers and counsellors also work closely together, hereby influencing each other’s’ perspectives and formula stories/institutional narratives. In order to analyse this mix, the concept of ‘elastic narratives’ is useful (Presser, 2004). This concept allow us to look at officers and counsellors’ ideas of how the inmates are supposed to change, especially, in relation to differences between ‘just doing your time’ and ‘participating actively in drug treatment.’ Importantly, however, in elastic narratives such ideas of change are often “contradictory, vague, or both” (Presser, 2004: 90–91). The concept of elastic narratives therefore, allows us to focus on the flexibility and overlapping institutional narratives at play in the formula stories of employees (see also: Brookman et al., 2011). Thus, we analyse narratives which present the same inmates as offenders in one situation and clients a bit later. Consequently, the two institutional images of ‘clients’ and ‘offenders’ cannot be constructed as if they operated through clear cut boundaries. Rather, they are enacted and narrated through fuzzy dynamics.

Setting and method

The setting

All prisoners (approx. 4000; Kriminalforsorgen, 2011) in Denmark’s 13 prisons (five closed and eight open prisons) have the right to psychosocial drug treatment within 14 days of first request. This right is similar to the ‘treatment guarantee’ offered by the municipal drug treatment centres. In this study, conducted in three prisons (one closed and two open prisons), we identify and analyse institutional narratives as they pertain to two kinds of drug treatment. First, outpatient treatment consists of weekly counselling sessions of approximately one–two hour, conducted either individually or in a group. The treatment is divided into cannabis treatment, cocaine treatment and treatment for people receiving substitution medicine (e.g. methadone or Subutex). The outpatient drug treatment is inspired by cognitive therapy, but motivational interviewing and mindfulness techniques are also used. Inmates enrolled in outpatient drug treatment, like other inmates, are obliged to either work or attend school on a daily basis. The second form of drug treatment, residential treatment, has inmates isolated in separate wings of the prison in order to prevent smuggling of illegal drugs as well as hinder negative influence from inmates who are sceptical towards drug treatment. This residential treatment is much more intensive, with daily treatment activities during the mornings, afternoons and sometimes also during the evenings. It is mainly inspired by Therapeutic Communities or Minnesota Treatment approaches (Weinberg, 2005). Inmates undergoing residential treatment are not required to work, only to participate actively in the treatment sessions. In both types of drug treatment, the counsellors are ‘imported’, as the Prison Service terms it, from municipal treatment institutions or private foundations. All the counsellors are trained therapists, and some of them are themselves former drug users. In this way, the prison hosts two distinct groups of employees: drug treatment counsellors and prison officers.

Method

Our study was conducted from June 2011 to June 2012 and is based on one month of participant-observation in each of three prisons; two closed (one female prison) and one open prison. In addition, 17 semi-structured qualitative interviews with counsellors and 12 interviews with prison officers connected to the treatment programmes were conducted; each interview lasted from 45 min to 1½ h.³ The work was conducted by three different researchers (including one of the authors), each working in one of the three prisons.⁴ Researchers were all allowed to move freely in the enclosed residential treatment wings. In the open prison, in which the outpatient programme was located, the researcher was often walking around the premises with counsellors; counsellors would walk between prison work stations in order to check up on their clients and ask prison officers about newly arrived inmates with drug problems. Researchers were allowed to participate in staff meetings, some of the therapy group sessions and some of the individual therapy sessions. Field notes were made either during the day in isolated settings in the prisons, or outside prisons in the evening. The daily presence of the researchers in the prison settings was also used to facilitate interviews. Most of these were conducted at the end of the data gathering process in order to foster rapport with informants. A common observational guide and common interview guides were used in all prisons. All field data and all interviews were transcribed and coded in NVivo. A thematic code tree was created focusing on: counsellors’ and officers’ views of institutional settings, the nature of inmates’ problems, the central mission of the programmes, control, and diverse role expectancies. Subcodes were then continually added, adjusted and compared following the coding process, and analytical concepts were developed. This reflexive thematic coding helped isolate and categorize core topics in our data (Charmaz, 2006; Strauss and Corbin, 1997).

As stated above, institutional narratives are social constructs, which counsellors and prison officers both draw on and re-construct when they, often as response to interview questions, talk about the inmates (Brookman et al., 2011). In the inductive analysis of our data, we identified what we found as important plots in our informants’ narratives. On the basis of these, we have constructed two institutional identities; one in which inmates are narrated as offenders and another which articulates them as clients. These differences relate to counsellor and prison officer’s narratives on inmates, respectively. However, we also encountered a range of ambiguous and fuzzy plots, which could not easily be related to one of the two institutional identities; in some respect, we found these hybrid plots the most interesting. In the following therefore, our analysis first describes the two distinct inmate identities articulated in the Danish PDT settings: clients and offenders. We then analyse how these institutional identities also have fuzzy boundaries in everyday practices.

Institutional identities in PDT: Clients and offenders

In this section, we focus on how differences between the offender and the client are constructed and articulated in institutional narratives. In particular, we analyse central elements involved in the construction of Danish inmates in the prison system into clients of drug treatment. In our analysis, we show how drug counsellors actively construct the institutional identity of the client as different to the way prison officers construct the identity of the offender. Especially, three ideas are at play in the stories of counsellors when they differentiate themselves to prison officers and articulate inmates as clients. Counsellors tell that they: 1) treat inmates as ‘real people', 2) work on their ‘inner core’, and 3) ‘empower’ them to engage actively in their own rehabilitation. It is precisely the narrative construction of these three activities which is central in the counsellors' talk. They will be discussed in turn.

The first way inmates are produced as clients in institutional narratives is when counsellors perceive them as not just another inmate but as an individual with a unique humanity. As individuals, the inmates are in need of respect. A counsellor explains:

It is important that inmates are met as real people, not just as offenders serving time. I don’t believe that the whole idea of punishment really changes inmates in a positive direction. Inmates need to encounter different kinds of professionals, that is, not only by the prison officers. (Interview, Counsellor)

Besides highlighting that inmates should be met with respect, the counsellor distinguishes between punishment and rehabilitation versus punishment which does not really change inmates in a positive direction; the latter is clearly linked to the roles of prison officers. Accordingly, the counsellors find there is a need for therapeutic professionals, counsellors, who are able to interact with the inmates in a different way. In this sense, drug treatment counsellors often see themselves as those professionals who, contrary to the prison officers, are able to meet inmates as ‘real people’ with feelings, histories, traumas and aspirations for the future. And when inmates are met in this way, they become, in the counsellors’ narratives, clients in need of therapeutic help instead of being offenders just doing time. Another counsellor explains:

[PDT] is a really great idea because many inmates have drug abuse histories – and they get convicted because of crime connected to that. From a societal perspective, it makes good sense to provide drug treatment – also in relation to the idea of re-socialization inside prisons … To work with that we need to focus on the real problems [that is, drugs]. (Interview, Counsellor)

The point here is that when inmates are articulated as clients in institutional narratives, they are no longer seen as just anonymous inmates, but ‘real people’ with ‘real problems’, in this case substance abuse, which the counsellors will work on. Thus, the idea is that the expertise of the prison officer is insufficient: The situation calls for a different kind of specialist.

A second process by which inmates are constructed as clients is by requiring that inmates need to get to know their ‘inner selves’. As one drug counsellor explains, PDT ‘is about teaching [the inmates] to come to terms with themselves … to find out who I really am – inside.' (Interview, Counsellor). ‘Getting to know oneself’ is a central goal of PDT in Denmark. Many of the counsellors argue that all people possess a ‘positive inner core’, and that social work is primarily about discovering, uncovering or even conjuring up this ‘inner essence’. A counsellor explains how substance use is countering the realization of this goal:

You know, every addict will always point toward people who do more drugs than themselves. But in my world, even people smoking hashish are substance abusers, and they are just as addicted as the rest … But instead of looking at others, they have to ask: 'What consequences does this [substance abuse] have for me?' We have to make this clear to them. (Interview, Counsellor)

In Danish prisons, the drug users can vary from young people who take party drugs (ecstasy, cocaine and amphetamine), those smoking only cannabis, to those doing opiates daily. However, in describing their clients’ problems, counsellors do not give much consideration to variation in drug use. A shared institutional narrative is that clients need to work on themselves to identify the causes behind their problems and to learn who ‘they really are inside’, regardless of the form of their drug use. That is, all drug users must work to find their inner – presumably positive – core in order to become drug free. If clients, however, continue using drugs, they are not viewed as being in contact with their ‘real’ inner core because addiction and intoxication create altered perceptions of reality (see also, Weinberg, 2005). The counsellors underscore that this positive inner core is hidden when people are under the influence of drugs; hence, they describe their own work as that of helping clients to become drug free and to rediscover this inner core (see also Carr, 2011).

The third way in which inmates are constructed as clients in institutional narratives is related to the pivotal requirement that inmates become actively engaged in their own correction and rehabilitation. The counsellors’ role in this respect is as facilitators: they see their role as empowering the inmates to work actively with their own problems (see also Donohue and Moore, 2009). When inmates become clients they need to participate actively in the treatment programme, engage themselves in a sincere manner, and reflect continuously on themselves, and other inmates, during group therapy sessions, for instance. In fact, the inmate’s self-reflection is often read as a sign of his or her active engagement in a project of self-change. Consider the following interview extract:

Q: How does your work make a difference?

C: Well, it becomes clear when [inmates] begin to reflect on their own practices and realize that some of these [practices] are quite bad: [An inmate might admit to himself that] 'maybe some of my patterns are not really good for me, and maybe it isn’t smart to do crime in order to get hashish or other drugs or maybe my drug thing is a reason for the bad vibes in my relationships'. When they begin to reflect like this, it’s a sign that they are getting healthy.

As part of their work to empower inmates counsellors highlight that inmates must learn to continuously monitor and work on their habitual responses in different situations; e.g. on their cravings for drugs or on their aggression towards others. The inmates are encouraged to reflect on situations in which they used drugs, with whom, what kind of drugs, etc. They are also taught that it is imperative to listen sincerely to other people, to observe them, to accept different viewpoints, and to accept criticism. In fact, counsellors call for an active and participatory approach from their clients regarding these methods of self-monitoring, in both individual and group therapy, and failures to honour these expectations can be a reason for discharging clients of the programmes. But inmates must also learn to reflect on themselves in a specific way. That is, they should look at previous habitual behaviour with scepticism, which then is read as a sign that ‘they are getting healthy’. Such processes of reflection are central in the institutional narratives of a changing self, and part of making inmates into clients (Brookman et al., 2011; Presser, 2004). In analysing the narrative constructions of the client, it appears that rehabilitation is not something which is done to you. Rather, rehabilitation is something that the inmate is supposed to do to himself through active participation and learning. In this way, positioning the inmate as a client accords with contemporary trends in social work programmes, requiring the active participation of the citizen (Cowden and Singh, 2007; Cruikshank, 2001; Tutenges et al., 2015).

Prison officer narratives – Institutional images of offenders

We will now briefly compare the institutional narratives of counsellors to that of prison officers. Thus, it becomes possible to trace how the production of the institutional identity of clients differs from the institutional identity of the offenders as it appears by officers’ narratives. Central to officers’ daily work is maintaining peace and order, with adherence to rules and regulations and non-fraternization as necessary in order to control large group of (dangerous) persons en bloc. Such work tasks reflect a perspective on the inmate as an offender and has been richly described in classic criminological literature (Goffman, 1961; Mathiesen, 1965; Sykes, 1957). Analysing the officers' narratives, the institutional image of offenders can be elaborated in a Danish context. In the following interview excerpt, for instance, an officer talks about his daily work:

Order and security are many things. It relates to the level of noise in the wings [of the prison], that the wings are tidy, that people have proper hygiene, that they carry out their daily jobs, that they show up at work or school and that they get up in the morning. And that inmates are locked up in their cells between 10 pm and 7 am, and that they report themselves [counting in open prisons]. This is required three times a day [morning, afternoon, evening]. But in general, order and security is concerned with everything just working, and if rules are violated, we have to figure out which disciplinary sanction this should result in. (Interview, Prison Officer)

In the institutional images of inmates articulated here, the ‘offender’ is articulated in all the minute practices in the prison officers’ everyday work. For instance, the obligation of inmates to attend work and school is clearly different from the institutional images of change at work in counsellor accounts of their clients. In the account of another prison officer, he explains:

If prisoners do not attend work on time, then I have to explain them that it is important. They must understand that rules must be followed. And we [prison officers] have to know where inmates are at all times. (Interview, Prison Officer)

Going to work or going to school are penal demands and they are part of a structured everyday prison life. Thus, a key difference in the articulation of the offender compared to the client in this regard is that these demands are not concerned with changing the selves of inmates, and they do not require that inmates participate in active and self-reflective ways. In other words, these institutional images operate much more through a penal approach towards inmates than through a therapeutic one. When focusing on the ideal differences in institutional inmate identities, as we have done in this section, the institutional images of the offender see the inmate as a (passive) recipient of the structured demands of the total institution, whereas the institutional images of the client see the inmate as a person in need of therapeutic intervention in order to change, to become better.

So far we have highlighted how differences in the institutional images of respectively clients and offenders can be analysed as if they were constructed due to the different perspectives of counsellors and prison officers. When focusing on differences as we have done in this section, the picture seems to be that in counsellor narratives, the inmate can be constructed as a client, whereas in prison officer narratives the inmate can be constructed as an offender. In practice, however, the use and construction of different institutional images of inmates is often fuzzier and crossing boundaries of staff categories.

Fuzzy institutional identities in everyday practices

In the following we will elaborate how institutional images of the client opens a new space of possibility related to the three plots described in the formula story above: meeting inmates as ‘real people’, requiring that they work actively on their inner self, and empowering them to be reflexive about their own problems. Below we will argue that this institutional space of possibility enables fuzzy dynamics between the institutional images of clients and of offenders.

In the following three sections, we will demonstrate how fuzzy crossovers between institutional images of offenders and clients are inherent in many of both the counsellors’ and officers’ practices. We will demonstrate this by outlining: a) how counsellors articulate issues of inmates’ home leave and parole in regard to ‘being ready’; b) how counsellors adapt to prison sanctions, and c) how the prison officers’ view on inmates is related to the institutional images of clients in need of therapeutic help.

Being ready?

Inmates are granted certain formal rights by the prison regime, such as the right to go on weekend leave and to be granted parole. Such rights are not dependent on inmates-as-clients’ active participation in their own correction – i.e. working on themselves in the treatment setting. Leave and parole can officially only be postponed or denied if inmates violate prison regulations; e.g. use/sell drugs, are violent or do not attend work/school. It is formally the prison officers, not the counsellors, who decide whether inmates are entitled to leave or to parole. From a counsellor perspective, however, rights to leave or to parole can easily jeopardize their treatment work. A counsellor explains:

We have two set of rules. We have treatment rules and prison rules, and that makes it difficult. For example, when inmates have a right to go on leave. From a treatment perspective, they might not be ready for that, and we cannot control if they do drugs on leave. We often see when they return from leave that they have been doing drugs – exactly as we expected because they are not strong enough. (Interview, Counsellor)

This contrast between ‘treatment rules’ and ‘prison rules’ coincides with the difference in our analysis between ideal type institutional images of clients and offenders. From a treatment perspective, this problem is not just a question of formal rights. According to the counsellors, their clients must be personally prepared for leave and parole. They must have worked with themselves to a sufficient degree so as to be able to resist taking drugs when let outside. According to counsellors, most inmates keep the links to their external networks in which drugs and crime play important parts. Although counsellors persistently try to persuade their clients to get new and ‘better' friends, they are rarely successful. Thus, the world outside is not just viewed as a world of freedom (in contrast to the prison world), but also as a world of temptation and danger. Not being ‘ready for leave’ therefore, indicates that clients might have not fully participated in the treatment programme and thus not gained sufficient self-insight to resist the temptations outside the prison. In cases like this, where inmates are seen as ‘not being ready’, many counsellors would like to take part in deciding when clients are eligible for leave/parole instead of leaving this decision solely to the prison regime.

Nevertheless, if inmates have used drugs while on leave, the key question for counsellors becomes whether the relapse itself can produce a learning in the inmate. Inmates are thus expected to confess their ‘sin’ to their counsellor; they can try to identify personal triggers, express regret about the relapse and might even have discovered how vulnerable they are when they found it so easy to engage in activities outside the prison which they intended to leave behind. In this sense, the relapsed inmate obtains, or projects, a self-knowledge which fits the formula story of the client institutional identity. For the counsellors, inmates' reflections and feelings about relapses are a way for the client to regain contact with his/her inner core and reflect on the lives she/he would like to live. In this way, if inmates show active reflection in regard to relapse, counsellors can still construct them as clients.

Contradictory institutional images on clients are also clear in the following example, where three counsellors discuss the lack of progress of one of their clients who has nevertheless qualified for parole according to prison regulations:

Counsellor 1 explains that she really does not understand why her client, female prisoner ‘B’, is qualified for parole: ‘B just did eight days in the hole [isolation cell], and she seems to be kind of dizzy [intoxicated] but all the extra urine tests on her have been negative’. Counsellor 2 adds: ‘B only hears what she wants to hear.’ Counsellor 2 refers to a talk she had with the client the day before: ‘B told me, “You cannot say anything in here, you just have to comply.”’ A short break in the conversation appears, and Counsellor 3 reminds them, that parole is related to prison rules, and that B’s parole contains conditions of supervision. Counsellor 3 concludes: ‘I really hope that she will be imprisoned again … maybe we can reach her then’ (Field notes).

B is enrolled in a residential drug treatment programme which requires that she complies with the treatment goals, and that she works actively on herself. However, B’s non-compliance (her probable intoxication) does not fit the narrative images of the client, and she is not judged as being ready for parole. In the counsellors’ discussion, the plot is that B is simply doing her time (which is a practice related to the offender identity and not the client) instead of being actively committed to identify and reflect on her previous drug triggers and change her present behaviour by working on her inner core. From a treatment perspective, therefore, B is not ready for parole. In this sense, the key plots of the counsellors’ narrative supports the images related to the institutional identity of the client, but these do not fit with the described behaviour of B. Interestingly, B’s ‘failure’ is individualized and not seen as an outcome of a failed treatment intervention. In fact, the counsellors hope that B will return to prison, i.e. that she will relapse into crime, because, as they say: ‘maybe we can reach her then'. In other words, inmates-as-clients eligible for leave or parole can be re-articulated as (potential) offenders because counsellors fear they are too weak to act according to the client identity promoted in treatment; an identity where the inmate stays clean, where the inmate faces reality without relapsing into drugs, and where the inmate has gained a deeper understanding of oneself.

The institutional image of ‘not being ready’ can be related to the requirement to work actively on your inner core, analysed as one of the key plots in the institutional identity of clients. That is, PDT operates with ideas of reforming the selves of its clients. Following this, working actively and being committed to change yourself fits with one of the key elements in the institutional narratives of clients. But when it comes to decide when clients are supposedly ready, the institutional narrative of clients become elastic – especially, when controlling the movement and motivations of inmates become overriding concerns.

Counsellors adapting to prison sanctions

Formally, issues of control and sanctioning are the job of prison officers and these practices can be related to our analysis of the institutional identity of the offender. In some respects, however, counsellors also use elements of control and punishment in their work with inmates. One counsellor explains:

Actually, in the beginning we had to get used to prison rules, and doing treatment inside a prison – coming here as a treatment institution. But when I think about it, you could say that many [residential] treatment institutions outside of the prison system lack well-defined structures. Here, the structure is working. (Interview Counsellor)

A clear example of the integration of such ‘well-defined structures’ in PDT is when counsellors argue in favour of sending clients to an isolation cell as punishment for taking drugs while in treatment. Counsellors argue that isolation cells can be beneficial because clients will then detoxify or at least only take their legally prescribed substitution medication. Moreover, isolation gives counsellors an opportunity to begin a reflexive conversation with the inmate, a conversation where it is not the ‘addiction talking’ but the client himself. The following anecdote gives an example of the more ‘disciplinary’ option that counsellors can use:

A prison officer and a counsellor are discussing what happened three days ago. Apparently, inmate ‘A.’ is in the hole [isolation cell] now and will stay there for seven days. He did not carry out his work duties. One thing is that he didn’t show up for work two days last week, another that during a body search, drugs were found on him. Both the prison officer and the counsellor think that isolation will improve his situation because it will calm him down. While in isolation he will be receiving only his substitution medication. (Field notes)

Analysing this conversation, inmates in PDT can be constructed as ‘offenders’ if they take drugs inside. However, by using disciplinary sanctions such as the isolation cell as a treatment tool, inmates can be ‘resuscitated’ as clients in the counsellors’ institutional narratives. The institutional image of isolation changes from being solely punishment for breaking the rules to being beneficial to treatment; a non-intoxicated space where counsellors aim to reach the inner core of the inmate.

Further, in regard to control, if counsellors suspect that certain clients use drugs, they may ask the prison officers to conduct a urine test. Positive urine tests automatically result in disciplinary sanctions such as fines, isolation cell and withdrawal of leave/parole. Requesting such urine tests hardly corresponds to the key plots in the narratives of institutional client images, e.g. ‘respecting and meeting inmates as real people’ and of preaching the values of ‘self-reflexivity.’ As with isolation cells, however, counsellors incorporate and re-interpret urine tests in their work with the inmates and manage to connect the use of urine tests to the construction of the client identity. The key narrative plot, in requesting urine tests, is that counsellors can check out the veracity of clients’ engagement in their treatment. That is, urine tests are narrated as an opportunity to have clients to work with their sincerity and reflexive attitude, and to get them in touch with their inner core. If tests are positive clients are not necessarily discharged from the treatment programme, rather another round of conversation is initiated in order to reach a mutual understanding of why the inmate did drugs while participating in treatment: was it a onetime slip, out of character so to speak? Or is a positive test confirming a longer trajectory of non-compliance to normative treatment ideas on reform?

As this analysis has shown, drug counsellors adapt to working in a strict environment like a prison by incorporating control and sanction options into their institutional treatment narratives. These narratives do not necessarily fit a singular formula story on the institutional identity of becoming clients. Rather, counsellors’ institutional narratives are characterized by fuzzy dynamics and elasticity where plots in the different formula stories influence each other, thus re-articulating institutional images of clients.

Officers adapting to the ideals of PDT

Even though prison officers are often uncertain as to what PDT is exactly about, many generally support it. Prison staff have experienced that PDT produces a more relaxed atmosphere in the cell blocks and in their interactions with inmates. They say that inmates in treatment often become “calmer”, to use the officers’ own terminology, less ‘restless', and that it is often easier to develop ‘working relationships which are mutually respectful’. Moreover, central institutional images evident in counsellor narratives, such as communicating respectfully with inmates, can also be identified in the accounts of some officers. Thus, in narratives and practices of the prison officers, the rise of PDT has produced new institutional images on the inmate. One prison officer explains.

You know as far as communication and behaviour is concerned, we don't accept yelling. If inmates are dissatisfied, they can come and talk to us, that’s OK, but in a decent way, in a good tone, showing mutual respect. For my own part, of course, I shouldn't yell or use bad language towards inmates either. I think that an effect of treatment is that we [prison staff and inmates] communicate more properly with each other – with respect for differences. (Interview Officer)

In the officers’ view, by communicating better with inmates, their job becomes less conflict-ridden, partly because inmates become easier to control. More than this, however, such narratives reflect a fuzzy institutional image in regard to officers’ perspectives on the inmate. Inmates should not only be analysed as offenders doing their time, but also as inmates-in-treatment. Two prison officers elaborate:

Inmates might as well use the time in prison productively. If you have a drug problem, you should participate in drug treatment and work on your problem. (Interview Officer)

Most [inmates] have problems with substance abuse, and I don’t think that you can just skip the substance abuse part and then move on … you have to work with the substance abuse. (Interview Officer)

The inmates figuring in these quotations are not just viewed as people who should be warehoused and locked up in their cells. The idea is that inmates who use drugs should use the time inside to work with the problem substance abuse; they are seen as inmates-in-treatment. In this sense, drug use is – also in officer narratives – articulated as a social problem, which requires therapeutic intervention. The plot in this institutional narrative is that inmates enrolled in treatment can work with themselves, actively, and thus change themselves through treatment. These features are central to the emergence of the institutional images of the client. Moreover, officers working in close proximity with counsellors actively try to motivate inmates to seek treatment; e.g. by informing counsellors about inmates who they think might benefit from treatment and by introducing counsellors and inmates to each other. In this sense, officers also construct inmates as persons who will benefit from ‘working on themselves’ through participating in treatment. The idea that inmates can become ‘better persons if [they] receive treatment’ (as one prison guard expressed it), and work actively on themselves, does not fit the singular formula story of offenders just doing their time, being locked away as passive targets of punishment.

In similar ways, officers who have worked together with counsellors or who have worked for some time in the treatment wing of the prison explain that they have obtained a more nuanced view about punishment. They feel that punishment does not necessarily help in regard to the drug problem nor does it help inmates become better persons. One officer’s remarks typify this view of the penal system:

Punishment does not change people in the right direction. Unless a urine sample is positive, sanctioning is always a question of discretion. If we put something into written reports, just from seeing it, it will be in the papers, the inmate’s file, and that implies disciplinary sanctions. For example, five inmates in the treatment wing did drugs last week, but I haven’t written a report on them. If I do that, their next leave will be postponed for three weeks. (Officer quoted in field notes)

Officially, if an inmate tests positive for drugs, prison officers are obliged to write a report and impose sanctions. If they choose not to conduct a urine test, officers can thus avoid sanctioning inmates. In practice, the sanctioning of minor irregularities is often avoided because officers believe this could jeopardize the progress inmates have made in treatment.

Prison officers, in this sense, have become ‘softer’. Such discretionary actions are common in human processing institutions (Lipsky, 1980, Sandfort, 2000) and also in prisons (Liebling, 2000, 2008). What is central in our examples, however, is that the discretion of officers is not only justified by attempts to make the everyday steering of a large group of people easier, they also justify discretion as beneficial to the inmate’s treatment. A similar idea comes to expression when officers defend the inmates’ right to go on leave or be paroled. They think inmates will benefit from seeing family and friends and will be able to change in a positive direction if they in this way are met as ‘real people'. Thus, some prison officers are getting softer, while some counsellors are adapting more to the availability of ‘hard’ power in a prison setting.

Concluding discussion

In this paper, we have argued that the rise of PDT in Denmark has created the institutional identity of the client. We have shown that this identity is both different and complementary to that of the offender, who is the traditional prison subject: punished, warehoused, passive and anonymous. According to analyses of the penal welfare regime, such offender discourses have grown in the last decades (Duke, 2000; Garland, 2001). In Danish political discourse as well, such rhetoric has been growing, especially since the advent of the US-inspired governmental drug political action plan The fight against drugs (Regeringen, 2003, 2010).⁵ In daily practice, the institutional identity of the offender is mostly articulated by the prison officers. Central to the job of prison staff is maintaining peace and order, with adherence to rules and regulations and non-fraternization as necessary in order to control large group of (dangerous) persons en bloc. Such a perspective on the inmate as an offender has been richly described in classic criminological literature (Goffman, 1961; Mathiesen, 1965; Sykes, 1957).

However, as we have demonstrated, counsellors also adapt to some of the ideas belonging to this institutional identity. Through the analysis of institutional narratives, we have argued that counsellors do not only argue for the importance of meeting inmates as ‘real people’ or working with their inner (presumably positive) core, they also adapt to prison-based restrictions and disciplinary sanctions affecting their clients. Counsellors begin to use isolations cells and urine tests as therapeutic tools, and they may even be more restrictive in their view of granting leave and parole than the prison staff. Nevertheless, even when adapting to controls and sanctions, counsellors translate what would otherwise be ‘disciplinary’ practices into therapeutic benefits for their clients. They re-integrate control into the narrative accounts of the client. Hence, relapsing can be used as a more honest way to achieve personal growth, and being re-jailed after release could actually be beneficial for inmates, as jail time would give them another chance to change.

Thus, we have argued that counsellors not only construct images of clients, they do also draw on available penal ideas related to the institutional identity of the offender. On the other hand, prison officers’ narratives are not clear-cut and cannot be grasped through singular formula stories either. In the analysis, we have shown that the institutional identity of the offender is not simply constructed as a passive target of the prison regime, but as a person who deserves a chance to work on himself by participating in PDT. Although prison officers do not explicitly articulate the inmate through the key plots we have analysed as central to the institutional identity of the client, they implicitly support this position. Hence, prison officers work on their own attitudes, trying to interact with inmates-in-treatment as ‘real people'. The prison staff value PDT not only because it eases the daily routine of the prison but also because it benefits the individual inmates themselves. The prison officers use their discretionary power to support the inmates’ treatment engagement.

Theories of institutional identity often highlight the identity-processing characters of institutions: certain institutions promote certain identities (Gubrium and Holstein, 2001). We have been inspired by this research tradition, but we also argue that it is important to focus on ambiguous and at times contradictory institutional images of inmates because they are important aspects of institutional practices. In this respect we have been inspired by the concept of ‘elastic narratives’, which focuses exactly on the flexibility and contradictions at play in actors’ narratives (Presser, 2004). Focusing on narrative elasticity allow us to trace the dynamics between images and narrative plots constructing, respectively, the offender and client. Counsellors adapt to the penal regime, and officers adapt to ideas in the treatment regime and both groups adjust their institutional narratives accordingly. Hereby, they create a fuzzy institutional identity, a kind of hybrid, not totally an offender not solely a client, but perhaps an inmate-in-treatment. Consequently, inmates being treated for drug abuse in today’s Danish prison do not only have to relate their everyday strategies to the institutional narratives of the offender and the clients, but they are also confronted with a third position, the inmate-in-treatment, who is worked on in ambiguous ways through the discretionary powers of both counsellors and officers. How such fuzziness affects their experience and strategies of being in prison is yet to be shown. However, we believe that such insights are important in order to fully understand the implications of the growing implementation of PDT in prisons. As a consequence of the increase of PDT in Danish prisons, the ‘hard power’ prison staff will maybe become an anachronism, to be replaced by more flexible and treatment-minded prison officers (Crawley, 2004). Also, drug problems in Denmark, may increasingly be treated within treatment programmes adjusted to the disciplinary regimes of the prison.

Footnotes

Notes

Bjarke Nielsen (corresponding author), PhD, is doubly affiliated as an Assistant Professor at Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research, Business and Social Sciences and at Epicenter, Centre for Cultural Epidemics, Arts, Anthropology, Aarhus University. His background is in anthropology and social sciences. His current research focus on methadone maintenance, on heroin assisted treatment and on prison based drug treatment.

Torsten Kolind, PhD, is a Professor at the Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research at Aarhus University, Denmark. His research focuses on drugs in prison contexts including drug treatment, drug control, and drug policy. He is Editor of the journal Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy.

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