The Staff World: Managing The Prison Population

 Chapter Objectives

1.    List the staff roles within the organizational hierarchy of correctional institutions.

2.    Identify the types of power available to correctional officers and list and describe the most common correctional officer personality types.

3.    List and describe the seven correctional officer job assignments.

4.    Identify five significant correctional staff issues.

5.    Detail the nature of the workplace corruption among correctional personnel and explain its causes

6.    Explain the impact that terrorism is having on prisons and on the running of correctional institutions today.

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Chapter Outline

I. The Staff Hierarchy

·           Ideally, today’s correctional staff members have four main goals:

o    To provide for the security of the community by incarcerating those who break the law

o    To promote the smooth and effective functioning of the institution

o    To ensure that incarceration is secure but humane

o    To give inmates the opportunity to develop a positive lifestyle while incarcerated and to gain personal and employment skills they need for a positive lifestyle after release

·           A typical correctional hierarchy includes the following:

o    Administrative staff

o    Clerical personnel

o    Program staff

o    Custodial staff

o    Service and maintenance staff

o    Volunteers

II. The Correctional Officer–The Crucial Professional

·           Although security is still the major concern, correctional officers today are expected to perform a variety of other tasks.

·           They routinely assume numerous essential yet sometimes contradictory roles (e.g., counselor, diplomat, caretaker, disciplinarian, supervisor, crisis manager), often under stressful and dangerous conditions.

A. Bases of Power

·           After surveying correctional officers in five prisons, John Hepburn identified five types of officers’ power, according to the bases on which they rest: legitimate power, coercive power, reward power, expert power, and referent power.

Legitimate Power

·           Correctional officers have power by virtue of their positions within the organization.

·           They have formal authority to command.

Coercive Power

·           Inmates’ beliefs that a correctional officer can and will punish disobedience give the officer coercive power.

·           Many correctional officers use coercive power as a primary method of control.

Reward Power

·           Correctional officers dispense both formal and informal rewards to induce cooperation among inmates.

·           Formal rewards include assignment of desirable jobs, housing, and other inmate privileges.

Expert Power

·           Expert power results from inmates’ perceptions that certain correctional officers have valuable skills.

·           Inmates who need help with ongoing interpersonal conflicts may value officers who have conflict-resolution skills.

Referent Power

·           Referent power flows from “persuasive diplomacy.”

·           Officers who win the respect and admiration of prisoners—officers who are fair and not abusive—may achieve a kind of natural leadership position over inmates.

B. The Staff Subculture

·           The relationship between correctional officers and inmates can be described as one of structured conflict.

·           Both worlds—inmate and staff—have their own cultures. Those cultures are generally called subcultures to indicate that both are contained within and surrounded by a larger culture.

C. Correctional Officers’ Characteristics and Pay

·           The officer held the lowest rank in the institution—just above trainee— but earned more than the prison’s superintendent because of the amount of overtime he worked.

·           According to published reports, many officers in Pennsylvania’s correctional institutions earn sixfigure incomes because of the number of hours they work.

·           In terms of ethnicity, the American Correctional Association (ACA) says that most correctional personnel at the state and local levels are white males.

·           Thirty-two percent of corrections personnel are members of minority groups.

·           The Federal Bureau of Prisons employs approximately 38,000 personnel in its prisons, and about 27 percent of them are women.

D. Correctional Officer Personalities

·           The staff subculture contributes to the development of correctional officer personalities. Those personalities reflect the personal characteristics of the officers as well as their modes of adaptation to their jobs and institutional conditions, the requirements of staff subculture, and institutional expectations.

·           The common personality types include: the dictator, the friend, the merchant, the turnkey, the climber, the reformer, and the do-gooder.

The Dictator

·           The dictator likes to give orders and seems to enjoy the feeling of power that comes from ordering inmates around.

·           Correctional officers with dictator personalities are often strongly disliked by prisoners and may face special difficulties if taken hostage during a prison uprising.

The Friend

·           The correctional officer who tries to befriend inmates is often a quiet, retiring, but kind individual who believes that close friendships with inmates will make it easier to control the inmates and the work environment.

The Merchant

·           Merchant-personality correctional officers (also called rogue officers or rotten apples) set themselves up as commodity providers to the inmate population.

The Turnkey

·           Turnkey officers do little beyond the basic requirements of their position.

·           A turnkey usually interacts little with other officers and does the minimum necessary to get through the workday.

The Climber

·           The correctional officer who is a climber is set on advancement.

·           He or she may want to be warden or superintendent one day and is probably seeking rapid promotion.

The Reformer

·           The reformer constantly finds problems with the way the institution is run or with existing policies and rules.

The Do-Gooder

·           The do-gooder is another type of reformer—one with a personal agenda.

III. Correctional Officer Job Assignments

·           They are classified by their location within the institution, the duties required, and the nature of the contact with inmates. The seven types are as follows:

o    Block officers are responsible for supervising inmates in housing areas.

o    Work detail supervisors oversee the work of individual inmates and inmate work crews assigned to jobs within the institution or outside it.

o    Industrial shop and school officers work to ensure efficient use of training and educational resources within the prison.

o    Yard officers supervise inmates in the prison yard.

o    Administrative officers are assigned to staff activities within the institution’s management center.

o    Perimeter security officers (also called wall post officers) are assigned to security (or gun) towers, wall posts, and perimeter patrols.

o    Relief officers are experienced correctional officers who know and can perform almost any custody role in the institution.

TIP: If you worked in a prison, what jobs would you want to have? Which would you not want? Why?

IV. Correctional Staff Issues 

A. Gender and Staffing

·           Like most women working in male-dominated professions, female correctional officers face special problems and barriers—many of which are rooted in sexism.

·           Female correctional officers typically say that they perform their job with a less aggressive style than men.

·           Women are more likely to rely heavily on verbal skills and intuition.

·           Studies have also found that female correctional officers rely more heavily than male officers on established disciplinary rules when problems arrive.

·           According to research, 55 percent of female officers indicate that their primary reason for taking a job in corrections is an interest in human service work or in inmate rehabilitation. In striking contrast, only 20 percent of male officers give this as their primary reason for working in corrections.

·           One national survey of maximum-security prisons in 48 states, the District of Columbia, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons showed that female officers were assaulted only about one-fourth as often as male officers.

·           Most male staff members are “pro-woman,” meaning that they applaud the entry of women into the corrections profession. 25 Many male correctional officers do express concerns about women’s ability to provide adequate backup in a crisis, however.

·           A fair amount of harassment is tolerated in the correctional officer subculture. It is viewed as customary and is often accorded little significance.

B. Stress

·           Stress appears to be more commonplace in prison work than in many other jobs. Nonetheless, it is often denied.

·           Stress among correctional officers has a number of sources.Feelings of powerlessness, meaninglessness, social isolation, and self-estrangement all contribute to stress.

·           Some authors have identified job alienation as the major source of stress among COs. Correctional officers rarely participate in setting the rules they work under and the policies they enforce; as a result, they may feel alienated from those policies and rules and from those who create them.

·           Authorities suggest a number of techniques for avoiding or reducing job stress.

C. Staff Safety

·           Staff safety is a major stressor for individual correctional officers and a primary management concern for correctional administrators.

D. Job Satisfaction

·           High levels of stress reduce the satisfaction correctional officers get from their jobs.

·           One reason for the difference in job satisfaction between supervisory personnel and those on the front lines of corrections work is that correctional officers often feel alienated from policymaking.

·           Officers who feel that they have some control over the institution and over their jobs seem much more satisfied than officers who believe they have no control.

E. Professionalism

·           Professional correctional organizations that operate at the national level and mentioned elsewhere in this chapter), have qualified and well-trained employees, well-run professional development departments, and welldeveloped standards of conduct.

·           These organizations also help to define common sets of values that establish the tone and climate for day-to-day operations in correctional facilities.

·           Although the development of an appropriate mission statement is vital at the organizational level, the development of a sense of personal ethics is crucial to daily on-the-job success.

o    In support of personal ethics, the International Association of Correctional Officers has published a Correctiona Officer’s Creed which summarizes the duties and responsibilities of a correctional officer.

F. Officer Corruption

·           Legislative analysts for the state of California estimate that more than 10,000 cell phones made their way into California prisons in 2010. According to those same analysts, prison employees are the main source of smuggled phones that end up in the hands of prisoners.

·           Other forms of correctional officer corruption and job malfeasance include the misuse of confidential information, drinking and abusing drugs while on duty, sleeping on duty, unnecessary roughness or brutality against inmates, racism, and filing false disciplinary reports on inmates.

·           Contributing to the problem of corruption among correctional staff is low pay—especially in some jurisdictions.

V. The Impact of Terrorism on Corrections

·           The FBI says that al-Qaeda continues to actively recruit followers inside American correctional institutions. Islamic terrorists are keenly aware of the 9,600 Muslims held in the federal prison system and see them as potential converts.

·           Because of their marginal social status, inmates may be particularly vulnerable to recruitment by terrorist organizations.

A. Anti-Terrorism Planning

·           Not only must today’s prison administrators be concerned about inmate involvement in terrorist activities, they must also think about and plan for the impact of the terrorism event within their facilities and within the communities in which their facilities are located.

·           Incarcerating those who have been convicted for acts of terrorism presents new Challenges for correctional administrators.

·           Bioterrorism is of particular concern for prison officials.

·           Significant recommendations for addressing the terrorist threat within correctional institutions come from Y. N. Baykan, a management specialist with the Maryland Division of Correction.