Procedural Justice and Prison Legitimacy: Towards a Democratic Model of Inmate Participation

The procedural account of prison legitimacy proposes that inmates' compliance with correctional institutions depends more on whether they feel that prison guards treat them fairly during their daily interactions than on whether the guards' decisions are ultimately favourable to them. In Crime, Justice, and Social Order, Anthony Bottoms and Alison Liebling provide a compelling overview of their work in this area, highlighting the importance of respectful relationships for building feelings of trust in penal institutions and advancing a humanitarian account of legitimacy that is sensitive to the moral and relational dimensions of order maintenance. Despite their important contribution, Bottoms and Liebling's procedural approach advances a precarious notion of legitimacy that depends too heavily on the fair treatment of inmates by prison guards and too little on methods of inmate participation that might help the institution align its values with those of prisoners, creating a more stable, and truly normative, commitment towards compliance.