Jamie Bennett

Dr. Jamie Bennett has worked in prisons since 1996 and held a number of senior positions. He is currently group director for contracted prisons in HM Prison & Probation Service.

Previously he was Deputy Director for Security, Order and Counter Terrorism in HM Prison & Probation Service and Chief Operating Officer at the Youth Justice Board. Prior to this, he was Governor of HMP Long Lartin, a high security prison; HMP Grendon, the only prison to operate entirely as a series of therapeutic communities; HMP Springhill, an innovative open prison which helps men to prepare for their release and resettle into the community, and; HMP Morton Hall, a women’s prison working with a diverse international population.

Jamie has published over 100 articles and reviews covering topics including: prisons and the media, social inequality and imprisonment, prison-based therapy and the development of managerialism. He is the author of The Working Lives of Prison Managers: Global change, local cultures and individual agency in the late modern prison (Palgrave MacMillan 2015), The Penal System: An Introduction Sixth Edition (with Paul Cavadino, James Dignan and George Mair, Sage 2019), Prisoners on Prison Films  (with Victoria Knight, Palgrave MacMillan, 2021) and Managing Prisons: Managerialism, Austerity and Moral Blindness (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024). He has also produced four other books: Understanding Prison Staff (ed with Ben Crewe and Azrini Wahidin, Willan 2008); Dictionary of Prisons and Punishment (ed with Yvonne Jewkes, Willan 2008); The Prisoner (ed with Ben Crewe, Routledge 2011), and; Handbook on Prisons (ed with Yvonne Jewkes and Ben Crewe, Routledge, 2016).

He is a trustee of Bromley Trust and a member of the editorial boards of Prison Service Journal and Incarceration.