If we pay for research participation in the community, why not in prison?

Legal practitioners will be familiar with the significant contributions people in prison can make through self-advocacy, including by challenging administrative decisions of correctional authorities to safeguard their human rights. Less widely recognised, however, are the important contributions people in prison make to the advancement of criminological and broader social science research.

Research involving people in prison can offer important insights into, for example, issues such as how correctional systems function, the effectiveness of rehabilitation initiatives, and the delivery of health services.

In community settings, participation in such research would ordinarily attract modest financial compensation (commonly in the form of a shopping voucher). In contrast, people in prison are typically denied remuneration and instead asked to contribute for purely altruistic reasons.

This is despite the fact that such participation may involve recounting traumatic and deeply personal experiences. Furthermore, the stress of doing so may be exacerbated by the research taking place in a closed environment without the participant’s usual support systems available.

A collaborative report completed by this author, Professor Lorana Bartels, Dr Caitlin Davey, and Dr Michelle Sydes showed that all but two of Australia’s states and territories currently have correctional policies that deny the provision of research remuneration to people in prison, with just NSW and the ACT currently permitting this practice.

Policies that deny research remuneration are commonly justified, on the basis of protecting people in prison from potential coercion or undue influence. Correctional authorities have argued that even offers of minimal payment in exchange for research participation may exert undue influence in a prison context, where financial resources are limited. This, they argue, increases the risk that individuals will consent to participate in research they might otherwise have declined.

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While the need to guard people in prison against coercion is a legitimate concern for researchers (as it is for all research involving human participants), it should not be overstated.

People in prison should be presumed, absent evidence to the contrary, to maintain the capacity to make informed decisions about their participation in research. Although their liberty is constrained, their autonomy in decision making should not be extinguished.

We argue that the failure to provide remuneration, particularly where research participation in the community would ordinarily attract payment, raises serious concerns about the fairness and ethics of conducting research with imprisoned populations.

It risks positioning people in prison as a readily accessible, but uncompensated, source of data. It provides the potential for individuals to be exploited for academic gain and advancements in research.

These concerns are particularly acute in relation to First Nations Peoples in custody. As many readers will be aware, First Nations Peoples are significantly overrepresented in Australian prisons.

They are also among the most researched populations globally, frequently contributing Indigenous cultural and intellectual property, as well as lived experience, to prison-based research. In our view, the denial of remuneration on the basis of incarceration status diminishes the value of these contributions. More critically, it also serves to reinforce longstanding power imbalances within research settings and further perpetuate colonial research practices.

So, where to from here? It is imperative that all Australian jurisdictions adopt a consistent policy position on this issue – one that is transparent, publicly accessible, and clearly articulates a framework for appropriate remuneration.

In our view, providing payment to people in prison for their contributions to research should be the default position. To embed such practices, this must be supported by funding bodies that resource such work.

Legal practitioners have an important role to play in advancing these reforms, including raising awareness of the issue and advocating for change. Without such collective action, there is a real risk that the exploitation and devaluation of people in prison will continue.

Dr Shannon Dodd is a senior lecturer in criminology and criminal justice at the Thomas More Law School, Australian Catholic University.