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Industrial relations in the UK prison service: The “Jurassic Park” of public sector industrial relations

John Black (Researcher and Associate Lecturer at Bristol Business School, University of West of England, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK. He previously worked in HM Prison Bristol as a part‐time tutor.)

Employee Relations

ISSN: 0142-5455

Article publication date: 1 March 1995

2462

Abstract

Industrial relations problems in the UK Prison Service are part of the wider crisis within the penal system over the past 30 years, from the era of the Mountbatten Report of 1966 to the Woolf Report of 1990, and beyond. Incidents and disputes, concerning both industrial relations and the problems of prison regimes, attract wide media reporting, not all of it accurate. Attempts to redress this selectivity, and to demonstrate the complex linkages between industrial relations and the administration, management and reform of the penal system. Focusing mainly on the Home Office Prison Service (HOPS), and on the three main trade unions, highlights the differing political goals of the prison service, and the perpetual turmoil without clear purpose in which the principal actors seem to be enmeshed.

Keywords

Citation

Black, J. (1995), "Industrial relations in the UK prison service: The “Jurassic Park” of public sector industrial relations", Employee Relations, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 64-88. https://doi.org/10.1108/01425459510085920

Publisher

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MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 1995, MCB UP Limited

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