Governance, Performance, and Capacity Stress: The Chronic Case of Prison Crowding (Executive Politics and Governance)

Public policy systems often sustain chronic capacity stress (CCS) meaning they neither excel nor fail in what they do, but do both in ways that are somehow manageable and acceptable. This book is about one archetypal case of CCS - crowding in the British prison system - and how we need a more integrated theoretical understanding of its complexity. Simon Bastow 1. Traditional Explanations of Capacity Stress and Their Limitations 2. A More Holistic Governance-style Approach 3. Performance, Capacity, and Managerialism as a Basis for Legitimacy 4. Measuring and Setting Capacity Standards 5. Senior Ministers, and the Limits of Their Influence to Resolve the Capacity Problem 6. Top Officials, and the Interface between Political and Operational 7. Governors, Staff, and Strategies of Local Adaptation 8. Privately Contracted Prisons - New Setting, Same Condition 9. Chronic Capacity Stress - a Complex Condition Bibliography