De macht van het onderhandelen. De penitentiair inrichtingswerker als street-level bureaucrat

Samenvatting

The Power to Negotiate: The Prison Worker as a Street-Level Bureaucrat. As street-level bureaucrats in a so-called frontline organization, prison workers regularly encounter situations in which they have to make immediate decisions about their clients, the prisoners. For that purpose they have great discretionary freedom. Except in the case of statutory (basic) rights of prisoners, this discretionary power allows them to interpret day-to-day situations and so deviate from semi-official regulations, a practice known in the Netherlands as gedogen. This article focuses firstly on the consequences of prison workers' discretionary powers on the daily practices of a penitentiary institution; and secondly, on how these practices influence the power relationship between prisoners and their 'guards.'. 14 References. Adapted from the source document.