Prisons are managed hierarchically: Department of corrections directors and secretaries oversee all state prisons, wardens serve as chief executive officers of individual prisons, and prison staff, such as associate wardens and facilities’ managers, report to wardens. This strict chain of command and the many levels between upper management and day-to-day operations means that the people who work and are incarcerated in prisons—who have the most experience within the system—often do not have a say in how prisons are run.

In 2019, the Urban Institute launched the Prison Research and Innovation Initiative (PRII) to challenge this model. PRII’s goal was straightforward: to encourage prisons to open themselves to participatory research, where people directly affected by a problem help shape the questions, process, and solutions.

PRII was predicated on the idea that community engagement creates the most effective solutions and that prisons improve when they invite researchers to work with them to identify challenges, cocreate innovations, and establish systems to track and evaluate progress.

But how would this theory and approach work in an environment that doesn’t always facilitate it? The Urban Institute identified a network of researchers and prisons in five states that would carry out the community-engaged approach at the heart of PRII’s mission. Alongside the research conducted locally in each facility, Urban executed a process study to understand whether PRII’s approach was rolled out as designed. We found that participatory methods were successful in many ways and across several of our pilot prisons.

Here are six lessons we learned about conducting participatory research in prisons to create meaningful innovations and reforms.

  1. Leadership buy-in is crucial, ongoing, and multifaceted.

Participatory research in corrections facilities requires an intentional, agency-wide strategy. Success hinges on continuous buy-in that reaches commissioners, wardens, line and nonsecurity staff, and incarcerated people, because each group shapes institutional culture and can either advance or block reform.

Read the full article about participatory research for incarcerated people by David Pitts, Evelyn F. McCoy, and Alice Galley at Urban Institute.