Responding to prison suicides: The penal state and evidence-based policymaking

How do political elites in the penal state affect what goes on inside prisons, and can evidence-based policymaking reduce the toll of prison suicide in England and Wales? I begin by theorising the penal state, and draw attention to the formally hierarchical character of penal policy and prisons, where political elites officially possess vertical authority to rule in a top-down manner. I then set out the realities of penal policymaking, and argue that the penal state in practice has a limited ability to command and control prisons from the outside, including in relation to prison suicides. Finally, drawing on elite interviews with former members of The Ministerial Council on Deaths in Custody, I suggest that this public body shows the weaknesses of two different models of governance, concluding that evidence-based policymaking often struggles in contentious fields such as penal policy.