Culture change in prisons: Where to start?

CRS 2025 presentation by Ms Flora F Howard, Dr Rachel Gibson and Dr Helen Wakeling (PID011)

Authors

Flora Fitzalan Howard

Chartered and Registered Forensic Psychologist

Flora Fitzalan Howard is a Chartered and Registered Forensic Psychologist, currently working in the Evidence-based practice team in Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. The aim of the team is to embed evidence-based practice across the agency. In this role, she helps to integrate evidence with the operational perspective to design and provide high-quality services reflecting the goals of the organisation and the interests, values, needs and choices of the individuals we serve. Flora started her career as a practitioner psychologist in a High Security Prison, primarily focussing on conducting risk assessments of individuals convicted of violent or sexual crime, and delivering cognitive behavioural treatment to help them reduce their risk of reoffending. Since joining the Evidence-based practice team, Flora’s particular areas of research have been around developing measures of procedural justice perceptions for prison staff and prisoners, examining the experience of electronic monitoring with the goal of using this to best effect, and developing the rehabilitative nature of processes in prison and probation, specifically disciplinary adjudications and recall.

Helen Wakeling

Chartered and Registered Forensic Psychologist

Helen is a Chartered Research Psychologist, currently working in the Evidence-based Practice team in Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. The aim of the team is to embed evidence-based practice across the agency. In this role she helps to integrate evidence with the operational perspective to design and provide high-quality services reflecting the goals of the organisation and the interests, values, needs and choices of the individuals we serve. Helen started her career as a researcher within SOTP, focusing on the risk assessment of individuals convicted of sexual crime, and the assessments used to measure treatment change. Helen has an MSc in research methods and has conducted a PhD on the use of psychometric assessment with individuals convicted of sexual offences. More recently she has worked on the development of tools to screen for individuals with learning disabilities, and psychosocial immaturity, the design and evaluation of innovative approaches to reducing reoffending, and the development of measures of procedural justice perceptions for prison staff and prisoners.

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