Governing a prison requires in many ways different skills than directing an ordinary agency. The prison governor does not govern prisoners but the prison personnel whose duties include daily contact with the prisoners. The operation of a prison is not solely aimed at the prisoners and the personnel but also at the whole society which sets many, sometimes contradictory requirements to prisons. Prison should be safe both for the prisoners and the personnel, there should be no escapes, the term of the sentence should be used for the prisoners’ advantage to prevent recidivism, the prisoners should not become institutionalised and estranged from the normal society, etc. All this is supposed to be accomplished with as little costs as possible.

In his study “The Change of Administration in a Small Prison”, Miikku Nieminen has collected and analysed the personnel’s conceptions and expectations concerning a situation in which a person outside the Prison Service was appointed as the governor of a prison while the previous prison governors had been trained by the Prison Service itself. Based on the collected material, the study extended to determine the requirements and challenges of governing a prison in more general terms.

The main results include that governing a prison well requires not only knowledge and skills but also activity, initiative, intensive follow-up of made initiatives, and active flow of information. The fact that prison is quite closed from outsiders and that the prisoners are held in it as a punishment requires a completely different way of monitoring the activities of the personnel compared to an agency type of institution where clients themselves come to get services. The speed of the flow of information and the correctness of the information are also very important. The prison governor is in charge of his/her institution from every aspect in view of the outside world. Thus, it is not enough that the prison operates according to the law and the prisoners receive the services and rights provided in the law but the prison governor is also responsible for the public image of the prison. Not only must the prison operate well, but also the outside society must be kept informed of it.