Prisons are not only sites of custody. They are organizational laboratories of modern democracy, and make visible some of the defining trends of our time: ageing, migration, and mental health.
And yet, for scholars of organization and management, carceral settings remain surprisingly underexplored. Why is this a problem? Because prisons are complex organizational systems. They are places where healthcare, public management, professional boundaries, inter-institutional coordination, value creation, and innovation are tested under constraint. To understand how organizations work in complex environments, this is where we should start.
Yes, a main challenge is the lack of systematic data. But this is exactly the moment to act collectively: to develop stronger conceptual frameworks, build research collaborations, and generate evidence on an area that has remained at the margins of our studies. Yesterday felt like an important step in that direction. Thanks to Cergas Sda Bocconi and to CNEL, we are beginning a research journey that will, for the first time, map the governance of healthcare services in the Italian carceral context. Thanks to SIMSPe, the Italian Society for Correctional Healthcare.
More to come in the next months!