Peer support and iatrogenic outcomes: Reinforcing the pain of imprisonment

Peer support schemes, such as peer-led induction (PLI), aim to ease the challenges of imprisonment by harnessing prisoners lived experience to support other prisoners. These schemes are designed to help prisoners navigate disorienting transitions, especially in open prisons where increased autonomy coexists with institutional control. Despite the assumption that PLI promotes well-being, legitimacy, and adaptation, emerging critiques suggest it could potentially cause iatrogenic outcomes, exacerbating the suffering it aims to alleviate. This article draws on interviews with male ex-prisoners and staff involved in PLI across three English open prisons. The findings suggest that PLI reinforces institutional hierarchies, displaces responsibility for care onto prisoners, and leaves mentees unsupported. Framed through the concepts of liminality, responsibilisation, soft power, and iatrogenesis, the article illustrates how peer-led schemes risk becoming superficial ‘tick-box’ interventions. It offers new empirical evidence and theoretical insights into the co-optation of care and the governance of suffering, where institutional needs are prioritised over well-being. The article highlights that the value of studying PLI goes beyond critiquing the scheme to exposing the ways that carceral care can be stripped of substance, turning practices intended to be supportive into potential sites of harm.