ingredients of situations are in place, and that both woman and tutor occupy predetermined positions inside a preformatted order (Latour, 2005a) to be ‘governed from a distance’ (Garland, 2001) through information and communication systems designed to transport distinct data fragments.
The processes in induction have been designed to extract and create relevant information and data from individual narratives (Hayles, 2012) corresponding to needs that can be assigned to the different services in this prison – they fragment Marissa. The induction processes related to prison education are of procedural nature including digital assessments and data and information driven objects that exclude individual narrative accounts of women related to education and employment from her virtual learner identity. They focus heavily on her prompt deployment in purposeful activities and effective institutional management whilst reducing her complex educational history to a virtual learner identity consisting of deficiencies (level indicators) and work preferences.
The designed recording objects hold staff and women accountable for the production of results, placing emphasis on Marissa's service attendance and needs assessment completion for institutional distribution and assignment. Interactions between staff and women, women and information technology are outcome-driven and outcomes, but also engagements, are evidenced for further scrutiny.
Marissa’s needs assessments are instrumental to meeting prison performance targets and address KPI’s - virtualities (Mennicken, 2014) that enforce the design of institutional actions, activities and procedures, enabling the effective evidencing and recording of engagements to produce data fragments (such as level indicators) aligned with the standards and categorisations manifested in those KPI’s. They stabilise group affiliations, however, do not account for, or measure, the quality of outcomes for the individual itself.
Marissa’s anticipated educational needs are reduced to and transformed into manageable chunks of information – level indicators – to be transported through the prison’s communication network and beyond to be ‘acted-upon’ (Franko Aas, 2005) from a distance. Level indicators are ‘boundary objects’ connecting sites and communities of practice allowing the ‘systemisation of criminal justice’ (Garland, 2001, p.155). They relate to prison targets, its core curriculum and as discussed in chapter 8 inform the planning and management of learning and teaching. They are, therefore, ‘a tool for governance’ (ibid, p.50) to be added to governmental statistics, informing new prison targets and curriculum decisions. Reducing Marissa’s individual complexity to generic educational level indicators renders the management of education more effective. However, the view focuses solely on measurable educational deficiencies to be managed. It removes other individual educational needs but also individual strengths from processes connected to classroom allocations and Marissa’s virtual learner identity.
The importance of raising basic skills levels in prisons through education (MOJ, 2016a; 2010) informed the prison’s economic investments in the induction process (new computers, software and furniture). An increasing use of computer-mediated processes removed interactions between human participants. Therefore, human competencies and expertise are detached and delegated to the computer and its software, producing distinct data fragments. Many women display serious mental health issues (e.g. Goff, et. al., 2007, PTSD in sentenced prisoners; Bloom, et. al. 2003, abuse, trauma and mental health), and according to PSO 4800 (2008) ‘may be suffering distress, frustration and confusion following imprisonment and will need a good deal of reassurance and support' (ibid, p.12), specifically during their first days of incarceration. Solitary computer-mediated engagements displace vital social interactions between staff and prisoners that might alleviate the pain and allow for rationalisation. Complications and behavioural issues were dominant during women’s engagement with the LEAF prison tour and the educational assessments contrary to McDougall et.al.’s (2017) observations of improved prisoner behaviour through the implementation of digital technology. Observed resistance, frictions and interactions outside of designed procedures suggest that needs relating to imprisonment itself (such as information but also relational needs) have not been fully met by the time women engage with their educational assessments. This very much contradicts required outcomes for 'the Induction and Assessment process [to meet] the needs of women prisoners' (ibid, pp.11/12).
Educational assessments and job talks are the first experience of and engagement with prison education. The procedures, however, do not require Marissa’s active engagement in becoming a prison learner nor encourage reflective practices (Turkle, 2015) vital for her real adaptation to prison life. Firstly, they emphasise a need that many women did not understand as immediate or even recognise as a need
(Giordano, et al., 2002). The gendered criminal pathway perspective, furthermore, suggests that other criminogenic needs are more important for women (e.g. McIvor, 2007). This, however, stands in stark contrast to educational assessment length in comparison to other needs assessments. Nevertheless, education, can aid offender rehabilitation and crime desistance (e.g. Reuss, 1999; Costelloe and Warner, 2014; Wilson, 2001). However, as desistance scholars have asserted, active engagement is important for rehabilitation to be meaningful and individual desistance narratives to develop (Maruna, 2001; McNeill, 2014; McNeill, et al., 2012; Giordano, et al., 2002). This includes enabling women to make informed decisions over their educational engagements and making it distinct from prison punishment. This process needs to start in induction.
Evidencing education as a need, therefore, responds predominantly to prison targets and its economic and security trajectories. It adds to a virtual rehabilitation rather than an actual rehabilitation, ensuring regime security through Marissa’s occupation. The frictions (Rubin, 2014) observed in inductions, however, highlighted the Marissa’s virtual transformation into prisoner and learner might be instant and effectively achieved but precedes her actual individual ability and acceptance of her new identities.
Marissa underwent a variety of assessments and technical networks of information exchange ensure her virtual learner identity is created and inserted into digital information and communication systems such as PNOMIS. Marissa and Maureen enter the prison system from different positions but both multiplicities have been transformed into manageable data points and fragments securing their effective and efficient deployment in the institution. Their future interactions in the classroom have already been enacted on a piece of paper, in a risk assessment, in prison rules,
PSOs, PSIs, statistics, learner classifications and compacts and job descriptions, in chats on the wing and the staff room as the next chapter highlights.