Penal Policy on Families of Imprisoned People—An Impossible Situation? <i>Understanding Scottish Prison Policy Through Prison Staff’s Moral Sensibilities</i>

Abstract Scottish penal policy emphasizes the rights and well-being of the families of imprisoned people, yet reports suggest persistent gaps between discourse and practice. This paper examines prison staff’s moral sensibilities regarding families. Using Zacka’s Street-Level Bureaucracy framework, it links staff moral distress to a misalignment between policy aspirations to support families and other institutional policies and characteristics that, in practice, harm them. Through this analysis, I recast the gap between discourse and practice not as an implementation issue, but as a consequence of moral incoherence in the state's position on families which, left unresolved upstream, is effectively delegated to prison staff. The paper has implications for penal policymaking and prison governance and advances a methodological argument for prison staff-focused research as a form of policy analysis.