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Paper short abstract

This paper employs a public policy analysis lens to explore an intervention programme focused on the family relationships of prisoners in Spain.The programme constitutes a mechanism for the observation, evaluation and supervision of both prisoners and the social environment of prisoners.

Paper long abstract

Prison social work has become a key tool in the prison system, specifically as a means of observing and assessing the social environment of prisoners. In Spain, the primary functions of social work are centred on the assessment of the prisoner's social environment and the identification of support and control resources outside the prison. This is done in anticipation of the prisoner's environment being able to provide a safe and controlled environment during leave and parole. However, in the Spanish system, until now, the participation of social work in both intervention programmes and in its relationship with prisoners' families has been limited and superficial and has hardly any tools of its own for assessment, monitoring and intervention.

In 2022, the Spanish prison system launched the Alianzas Programme, a guide to social work intervention in prisons. Our paper employs a public policy analysis lens to examine the intervention guide, conferences and the instructions for implementation. Our analysis will show how the programme conducts the professionals in a way that obscures practices of responsabilization to the families while reinforcing positions of inequality along gender, class and racial lines.

Alianzas is configured as a means of innovation that imports elements from social psychology, as well as from circles of support and responsibility for the analysis and intervention of family relationships. Furthermore, thereby also reinforcing the position of a feminised and little-recognised profession in the prison environment.