By Kati Rantala
Consulting people directly affected by policy is increasingly seen as an important part of inclusive policymaking. But how can knowledge grounded in individual experience be used to inform policies affecting a much wider population? In our new Policy & Politics article, ‘From Experiential Knowledge to Generalisations in Lawmaking: Consultations with Incarcerated Individuals Navigating the Prison System’, we examine how experiential knowledge can move from individual accounts to broader policy evidence.
Experiential knowledge is often regarded as highly contextual, subjective and difficult to generalise. Our research explores this challenge through consultations with incarcerated people during the drafting of reforms to Finland’s Imprisonment Act.
The consultations focused on prisoners’ use of phones, email and the internet. These might appear to be everyday matters, but access to communication is crucial for navigating life inside and outside prison. Prisoners need to manage benefits, housing, banking and dealings with public authorities, particularly when entering prison or preparing for release. Restrictions on communication can therefore create significant administrative burdens.
The consultations provided two interconnected forms of knowledge. Prisoners had knowledge of how the prison system actually worked, including unclear procedures, limited computer access and inconsistent practices. They also had practical knowledge of how to navigate these obstacles. For example, prisoners might rely on relatives to manage their affairs or wait to see a social worker in order to make calls that they could not otherwise afford.
Importantly, this experiential knowledge did more than illustrate existing problems. In the draft legislation, it was used alongside other forms of expert evidence to justify proposed reforms, including removing permission requirements for internet and email use and clarifying access to free telephone calls.
But how could experiences gathered from particular prisons support proposals applying across the Finnish prison system? We argue that analogical reasoning provides the missing link. Prisoners elsewhere encounter sufficiently similar institutional structures, procedures and needs for policymakers to make context-specific generalisations from the experiences of those consulted.
This matters well beyond prisons. Similar reasoning could help policymakers use experiential knowledge from people navigating other relatively standardised institutional environments, including psychiatric hospitals, reception centres, nursing homes, detention facilities and shelters.
Our research shows how lived experience can move beyond being treated simply as individual “opinion”. By identifying common features across similar contexts, policymakers can assess when context-specific generalisation is justified and give experiential knowledge a more rigorous place alongside other forms of evidence in policymaking.
You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at
Rantala, K., Helminen, M., Simonen, M., & Lundell, S. (2026). How experiential knowledge becomes evidence in lawmaking through consultations with incarcerated people. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2026) from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2026D000000105
If you enjoyed this blog post, you may also be interested in reading:
Hill O’Connor, C., & Bennett, H. (2026). Lived experience as evidence in anti-poverty policy making: a governance-driven perspective. Policy & Politics, 54(2), 334-355 from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2025D000000078
