A typology of prison officer approaches to care

Abstract

This article presents a typology of prison officer approaches to caring for prisoners, based on qualitative fieldwork in one men's and one women's prison. Five distinct approaches were identified: true carer, limited carer, old school, conflicted and 'damaged'. Officers with each caring style shared a particular view of prisoners as a group, and varied in their adherence to traditional prison officer cultural norms. Length of experience and gender were related to caring approach, as were work environment and experience of trauma. I argue that all prison officers contended with care in their work, and I consider the personal and institutional factors that shaped the quality of care for prisoners.

Situating the Self in Prison Research

“…Lacking an "indigenous role" and ignorant of social norms, the outsider-observer is not easily placed and may disrupt established relations in ways that "trouble" the smooth-running of social transactions (notwithstanding, of course, that the actors inside prisons may not be invested in things running smoothly; many prisoners actively resist in all kinds of ways, and officers themselves adopt variant roles [BenDavid & Silfen, 1992;Farkas, 2000;Tait, 2011]). This seems to me to be one of the ways in which the practice of ethnography can "make the familiar strange," both to the observer and, perhaps, to participants in the field, itself "punctuating" the situated activity under observation and making it legible.…”

La profesionalización de los educadores deportivos en prisiones europeas / Professionalization of Sport Educators in European Prisons

“…Sin embargo, estudios recientes indican que las guardias mujeres suelen preferir un papel de cuidado hacia los internos, mientras que los hombres asumen un papel conflictivo y de castigo (Tait, 2011). Los internos también perciben un trato más justo y una actitud más positiva en las cárceles que cuentan con más mujeres funcionarias (Beijersbergen, Dirkzwager, Molleman, van der Laan y Nieuwbeerta, 2013).…”

“…Los estudios sobre la variable edad indican que los guardias más mayores tienen una actitud más positiva hacia la rehabilitación o reeducación y los jóvenes una actitud más punitiva (Paboojian y Teske, 1997). Otros estudios señalan que los años de experiencia es una variable más relevante e indican que los guardias con menos experiencia tienen perspectivas más punitivas hacia los reclusos y su rehabilitación que los de mayor experiencia que muestran actitudes más positivas (Antonio y Young, 2011;Tait, 2011). Por otra parte, las últimas investigaciones indican que los funcionarios con mayor nivel de estudios tienen una actitud más favorable hacia el cuidado de los reclusos y su rehabilitación y actitudes menos positivas hacia el encierro y el castigo (Tewksbury y Mustaine, 2008).…”

Officers and Drug Counsellors: New Occupational Identities in Nordic Prisons

“…On the other hand, this research has also shown that officers and inmates may not only share common cultural codes and moral values (Shapira and Navon 1985;Owen 1988), but also a common interest in upholding a calm, predictable everyday life in prison (Sparks, Bottoms and Hay 1996). In working to maintain this predictable everyday life, some officers tend to cultivate oppositional roles vis á vis the inmates, while others seem to be more accommodating or 'soft' (Tait 2011). The oppositional roles tend to exist in a structural relation to each other.…”

“…This predicament underscores the often neglected fact that prison work is highly emotional; moreover, such emotions are highly structured, with clear rules and expectations towards which emotions officers can in fact express and feel (Crawley 2004). For instance, Tait (2011) found five approaches to care among officers, going from a 'true carer', over to 'old schooler', to 'conflicted'. The last category was staff who, even though they wanted to offer care, conflate care with control.…”