Conceptualising service-user engagement in the Criminal Justice System as infrastructure: A prison council case study.

Service-user engagement schemes in the UK criminal justice sector have exploded over the last thirty years. Despite their growing salience to discussions of legitimacy, accountability, and participatory governance debates, in-house i.e., prison-run service-user councils remain understudied. Grounded in qualitative custodial service-user engagement initiative mapping workshops conducted with prison councils, combined with analyses of HM Prison Inspectorate reports, this study addresses this contemporary knowledge gap. ‘Engagement infrastructure’ is introduced as an innovative conceptual device directing attention to if and how these participatory mechanisms are embedded or not by accounting for their interaction with wider penal logics. The implications of this study’s findings are pertinent to maintaining One HMPPS policy aspirations and critically inform wider sector shifts towards engaging former rather than current penal service-user communities.