Coproducing justice in carceral contexts: user voice prison councils as a model of epistemic participation

Coproduction, as a form of participatory governance manifesting (to different degrees) in democratic innovations is, essentially, a term for a particular type of relationship between services, service users and others, from which an inherently different way of 'doing' services emerges. While it denotes a range of collaborative practices, in general, coproduction has been defined as 'professionals and citizens making better use of each other's assets, resources and contributions to achieve better outcomes and/or improved efficiency'. However, rather than focusing principally on their outcomes, the value of, and rationale for, co-productive approaches, may be more normative than instrumental, and reside rather in their processes (on which the outcomes depend) to the extent that they represent a form of, and generate opportunities for, epistemic participation, by enabling differently situated but interdependent actors to forge new norms of interaction, new forms of knowing, and new ways of being and doing.