Workshop Session
The term ‘rehabilitative prison environment’ is increasingly used to capture some presumed essence of prisons’ positive potential. Yet this change is very recent. It was not until 2021 that the term gained some currency following the 14th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Kyoto. There, a high-level event was themed on rehabilitative prison environments and the term appeared in connection with prisons in the official communique, the Kyoto Declaration. Now it is beginning to emerge in academic studies. Yet rehabilitative prison environments remain poorly defined, and the term is more often used simply as shorthand for improved conditions in prison aligned with the Nelson Mandela Rules. This paper draws on extant academic and grey literatures, combined with original research on national and state penal authorities’ use of this and allied concepts, such as rehabilitative culture. Triangulating theoretical, practical, and organisational forms, we suggest avenues for further thinking and exploration and reflect on how the custodial environment, long the Archilles heel of programming for rehabilitation, social reintegration, and desistance from offending, might again become a productive site of reform.