The Families – Inside Prison and Out project at the University of Strathclyde involved research with prison officers in Scotland whose roles involved working with, or related to, families of people in prison. The project ran from October 2020 – December 2021 and the research took place between April and September 2021, involving ten semi-structured interviews with prison officers working across five prisons in Scotland. These prisons held male and female prisoners, young people, and those serving short, long and life sentences as well as the open estate. The interviews explored the prison officers' understanding and operationalisation of the Scottish Prison Service Family Strategy 2017-2022.Families – Inside Prison and Out was a one-year Postdoctoral Fellowship project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/V010107/1) and carried out at the University of Strathclyde. As part of this wider Fellowship a research project took place with prison officers across Scotland (Prisons, Prison Officers and Prisoners’ Families). Families of prisoners are increasingly recognised as important within criminal justice policy and practice, and by academics. This is reflected in the significant increase in academic articles in this area and in government and prison service reports and policies. They are seen as important both through the role they can play in reducing re-offending, and increasingly in their own right in terms of the need to address the impact of a prison sentence on those it affects, generally disproportionately those who are already within marginalised positions in society. There is little understanding, however, around how these policies are understood and put into practice by those working within the prison system. This project addressed this gap in knowledge by exploring prison officers’ understanding and operationalisation of the Scottish Prison Service’s Family Strategy 2017-2022.

These are semi-structured in-depth qualitative interviews with prison officers working in roles with, or related to families, across five prisons in Scotland in 2021. Participants were recruited through contacts identified within each prison, which could either be the Governor or another management level of staff member. Information was provided on the project to this member of staff which was then passed on to prison officers they felt met the criteria for taking part in the project who then made contact directly with the researcher to arrange the interview. Interviews took place using Teams or by telephone.