Penal Legitimacy, Well-Being, and Trust

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter introduces selected strands of Tony Bottoms’ empirical and theoretical work which are most relevant to the chapter author’s research, undertaken with others, on prisons. It focuses in particular on the shared interest in the links between social order and legitimacy in prison and broader socio-political ideas. It reflects on the direction in which a sustained programme of prisons research, conducted with others, and with strong roots in the original theoretical and empirical domains outlined in Prisons and the Problem of Order in particular, is taking us and how Tony’s continuing work resonates with empirical explorations of contemporary prison life. It shows how Tony’s theoretical instincts in relation to the prison, in his work with Richard Sparks and Will Hay, have been empirically verified, and also developed, in particular to incorporate notions of individual well-being and trust. It outlines why his preoccupation with the virtues, and how they might be grown, matters. The ‘crisis of trust and social order’ in prisons and in modern communities is, as Tony recently put it, ‘morally serious’. This chapter illustrates the extent to which this is the case.