Journal
CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR
Volume 49, Issue 10, Pages 1516-1535Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/00938548221104980
Keywords
correctional officers; correctional staff; corrections; incarceration; perceptions
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Funding
- National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice [2016-IJ-CX-0014]
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This study investigates how work in long-term restrictive housing influences the perspectives of prison personnel on inmates, and presents hypotheses and findings based on a mixed-methods analysis of large-scale survey data and qualitative data.
The punitive era in the United States and other countries has included reliance on long-term restrictive housing (LTRH)-consisting of solitary confinement with few privileges-as a means of managing violent and disruptive individuals in prison. We examine how work in such housing may influence how personnel, including officers and staff, view individuals in prison and assess two hypotheses. First, those who work in LTRH will be more likely to hold a dehumanized view of these individuals. Second, the theoretical mechanisms through which such a view may arise involve brutalization, organizational context and culture, role conflict and distancing, and empathy fatigue. We assess these hypotheses using a mixed-methods study, analyzing data from a large-scale prison personnel survey (n = 9,656) and qualitative focus group and interview data (n = 144). Implications of the study's findings for theory and research on restrictive housing, corrections, and the punitive era are discussed.
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