Mirror Reflections on the Correctional and the Psychiatric Work Practices

The presentation organises the ethnographic data into four paragraphs. The first paragraph is based on an account given by a psychiatrist employed in the correctional service. Her narrative describes lack of psychiatric beds and psychiatric knowledge about mentally ill offenders. The second depicts how an offender with a double diagnosis manages life in a high security prison. The third is concerned with the staff of a low security prison and their views on contradictory aspects of collaboration with the local community mental health centre (DPS). The fourth delineates the problematics of interagency collaboration according to a psychologist employed by the DPS. The four data sets are processed according to Engeström’s theory of expansive learning. In particular, the research data are construed as mirror material, or more precisely representations of the contradictions articulated by selected actors of the two activity systems.