Hester Paanakker

To better embody its’ mission, the policy department of the prison sector rolled out a new policy program (called the Prison System Modernization Program) from 2010 onwards. The Modernization Program centered on the behavioral motivation and rehabilitation of the detainee, greater self-efficacy for the detainee in the system and stronger collaboration with chain partners with the aim of reducing recidivism (Dutch Correctional Agency, 2009c). At street level, this program spurred a new way of service delivery for penal facilities and their staff to implement, with more focus on employee-detainee interaction, psychological motivation, and multi-disciplinary consultation and monitoring. At the same time, the prison sector committed itself to an elaborate set of austerity and organizational reform measures to improve efficiency –yet another value-, mostly to meet capacity issues due to a declining demand for cell capacity and a restrictive political-financial mandate. This included the phased shutting down of penal facilities, increased staff mobility and cutting management layers (Dutch Correctional Agency, 2009a). The prison reform was truly kicking in and austerity measures were in full force when data for this study was collected in 2014 and 2015. By then, there was criticism, and stories of disappointment, work overload, exodus of staff and the critical financial status of the sector were permeating to the outside world, including their potential deleterious side-effects for the sector’s unanimity and for public service delivery on the ground (Inspectorate of Justice and Security, 2017; OmroepWest, 2016; Roerdink, 2017). Previous empirical research on Dutch prisons has pointed out that street-level prison officers struggle with this in their everyday work, revealing a potential mismatch between espoused policy values and the values expressed in organizational practice (Paanakker, 2019). 4.6 Research Methods and Data Collection Data collection consisted of a two-month period of participatory observation (spread over 75 hours), in two penal facilities and across eleven different departments, an analysis of relevant policy documents, and a total of 55 in-depth semi-structured interviews. Interviews were conducted on four different staff levels: (1) prison officers (N=32), (2) middle managers (N=9) who head one or two detainee departments and the corresponding prison officer staff, (3) higher 101 Comparing Perceptions of the Frontline Craft