The Wall Has No Name: The Persistence of the Prison in the Face of Change

• Published date: 01 November 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10439862241272336
• Author: Shannon M. Sliva,Jeffrey Lin
• Date: 01 November 2024

https://doi.org/10.1177/10439862241272336

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

2024, Vol. 40(4) 576 –600

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10439862241272336

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Original Article

The Wall Has No Name:

The Persistence of the Prison

in the Face of Change

Shannon M. Sliva1 and Jeffrey Lin2

Abstract

Prison reform in Colorado has been halting, despite political and cultural conditions

that are broadly conducive to making meaningful changes to correctional policies and

practices. These conditions led to Colorado being chosen for the Prison Research

and Innovation Network—a five-state consortium given funding to engineer change

in one facility in each state through an action research process using community-

based participatory methods. This article describes findings from the action research

process in Sterling Correctional Facility—the selected project site in Colorado. The

management, the staff, and the people incarcerated in this facility have generally

welcomed reform efforts, but change has occurred slowly and with less effect than

expected. Using an engaged participant observation approach, along with survey and

in-depth interview data collected during the research process, we map the ecology

of facility-level change and how local conditions have shaped the pace and reach of

innovation efforts. We offer recommendations related to the reality of state-level

and facility-level prison reform, especially around the need to deeply understand

and be responsive to the cultural, political, and institutional environments in which

change is expected to occur.

Keywords

prisons, correctional institutions, prison reform, correctional reform, action research,

community-based participatory action research, engaged participant observation

I was all full of energy, ready to go, ready to change the world!

And you run right face first into a wall and the wall has no name.

—Correctional Officer, 20 years

1University of Denver, CO, USA

2Judi’s House/JAG Institute, Aurora, CO, USA

Corresponding Author:

Shannon M. Sliva, Graduate School of Social Work, University of Denver, 2148 South High Street,

Denver, CO 80208, USA.

Email: shannon.sliva@du.edu

1272336CCJXXX10.1177/10439862241272336Journal of Contemporary Criminal JusticeSliva and Lin

research-article2024

Sliva and Lin 577

Despite recently exhibiting cultural and political conditions that appear conducive

to correctional reforms, prisons in Colorado have been slow to change, and reform

efforts have fallen short of expectations. In this article, we will examine the context

within which these efforts occur, with a specific focus on reform efforts in Sterling

Correctional Facility (SCF)—a large, remote prison in northeastern Colorado that

houses approximately 2,000 male-born incarcerated people and employs roughly 700

correctional workers when fully staffed.

Both the facility and the state’s correctional leaders have, to varying degrees over

the last few years, declared their intentions to use empirical evidence to inform

changes in policy and practice. Between 2019 and 2022, the Executive Director of

the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) was Dean Williams, who explic-

itly stated his commitment to “wholesale changes and reforms to Colorado prisons”

in the style of progressive Scandinavian correctional systems (Osher, 2022). A num-

ber of initiatives were launched during his tenure that were meant to move Colorado

corrections in a progressive direction. One of these initiatives was the Prison

Research and Innovation Network (PRIN), an action research project funded by

Arnold Ventures and administered by the Urban Institute. PRIN comprises five pris-

ons in five states, selected for their readiness to utilize data and community-based

participatory action research (CBPAR) models to inform changes to policies and

practices in those facilities. In Colorado, SCF was selected to participate, and an

external research team at the University of Denver was awarded funding in 2020 for

5 years to enact and measure evidence-based changes. The authors of this article led

the research team that designed and oversaw the action research process intended to

benefit incarcerated people and correctional staff. The warden of SCF endorsed the

PRIN award and has been a consistent supporter of research and innovation efforts.

PRIN also received significant, but not total, buy-in from staff and incarcerated

people, some of whom also wrote in support of participating in the PRIN project.

CDOC, the Colorado Governor’s Office, and the Attorney General’s office also

endorsed the award.

However, as the PRIN project nears its completion in 2024, meaningful changes at

SCF have been scarce. In fact, the most recent wave of survey data, collected in 2023,

indicates marginal improvements in some aspects of the staff experience (e.g., satis-

faction with management and community) and significant deteriorations of the experi-

ence for incarcerated people (Lin & Sliva, 2023a, 2023b). In this article, we examine

the reasons for this lack of progress, despite ostensible support from CDOC leadership

and SCF management. We present interview, survey, and observational data collected

during the grant period, offering our analysis of the key impediments to meaningful

change. We describe how broader economic and cultural forces are refracted through

institutional features of the prison and the department of corrections, and offer an

explanation for the persistence of the prison in the face of concerted reform efforts. We

seek to document the complex realities within which such efforts exist, and how these

realities must be understood and navigated to pursue meaningful reform efforts in the

future.