Researchers of responsivity call for a renewed focus on the role of staff–prisoner relationships in facilitating rehabilitative aims in correctional facilities. Although area experts suggest communication styles are crucial indicators of the success or failure of therapeutic efforts, how correctional officers (COs) communicate with prisoners to form trusting, caring relationships within correctional facilities lacks scholarly inquiry. In response, we investigate how COs working with adult male prisoners value and use their communication skills to discern which techniques are consistent with the responsivity principle. Male and female COs ( N = 42) employed in remand or correctional centers across Canada participated in semistructured in-depth interviews. Analyses of interview transcripts reveal officers self-report valuing and using prosocial communication techniques when working with male prisoners in a “relational but secure” approach. Findings suggest this approach provides the trust and respect needed for responsivity efforts to be effective. The facets of a “relational but secure” communicative approach, the vehicles by which such an approach is produced by COs, and the obstacles preventing its successful implementation are discussed.

Prisons are increasingly recognized as emotional places, especially for frontline staff. Though sociological accounts of emotional labour in prisons acknowledges the potential for negative outcomes (e.g. burnout), little scholarly attention has investigated the potential for positive outcomes, particularly opportunities for staff to earn moral wages. This article explores the emotional labour undertaken by correctional officers (COs) working with incarcerated youth in Canadian provincial prisons. Utilizing interviews with 40 COs, we unpack the patterned interactions characteristic of frontline work that call for emotional labour by prison staff, and its outcomes. Our results show that staff are aware of the emotional labour expected of them on the frontline, where opportunities to earn moral wages are contextualized by structural limitations inherent to the carceral environment.

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‘Sexting’ as a form of sexual expression and experimentation has grown increasingly ubiquitous among teens. In addition to fostering intimacy and closeness among selected partners, sexting between minors incurs considerable risks to youth mental, physical, social and emotional wellbeing. Current debates on sexting focus on the conflicting role of pressure and pleasure among youth. We highlight findings from 35 focus groups with Canadian teens examining attitudes and experiences with cyber-risk and sexting. Our results show that youth demarcate boundaries between public and private and an ordered/disordered sense of self as they seek intimacy with others through the exchange of explicit digital material. Drawing on recent conceptual and theoretical work on image-based sexual abuse, we suggest that teens express situated agency when reflecting on sexting, indicating only partial awareness of wider patriarchal contexts mediating and patterning gendered behaviours involved in sexting and its outcomes.