Jamie Bennett is Deputy Governor, HMP Whitemoor, and editor of the Prison Journal.Ben Crewe is Lecturer in Criminology at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge.Azrini Wahidin is Reader in Criminology and Criminal Justice at Queen's University Belfast.

• 1. Introduction Part 1: Prisons and Staff Issues 2. Personal reflections on prison staff 3. Prison staff: an international perspective 4. The experiences of black and minority ethnic prison staff 5. Prison officers and gender 6. Prison staff in the public and private sector Part 2: Prison Officers 7. Industrial relations in prisons 8. Understanding prison officers: culture, cohesion and conflict 9. Staff and order in prisons 10. Creating ghosts in the penal machine: prison officer occupational morality and the techniques of denial 11. 'An inconvenient criminological truth': pain, punishment and prison officers Part 3: Prison Managers 12. Prison governors: new public managers? 13. Change management in prisons 14. 'Resisting the scourge of managerialism': on the uses of discretion in late-modern prisons 15. The role of middle and first-line managers Part 4: Prison Staff 16. The changing face of probation in prisons 17. Teachers and instructors in prisons 18. Psychologists in prisons 19. The prison drug worker 20. Health professionals in prisons Part 5: Developing the Human Resources of Prisons 21. Recruitment and assessment of prison staff 22. Training and developing prison staff 23. The experience of prison officer training Part 6: Conclusion 24. Concluding comments on the social world of prison staff