Correctional Officer Reflections on How to Address Incarcerated People’s Unmet Needs in Canadian Prisons

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although incarcerated people best understand their needs and rehabilitative processes, the current study explores how correctional officers (COs) understand the needs of people in their custody and care to support their reentry and incarceration experience. Given COs are the lifeline of incarcerated people, penal scholarship should value their input as an essential resource for recognizing what incarcerated people need to desist and prepare for reintegration when imprisoned. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 28 COs employed in Atlantic Canada, we contextualize and report on what COs believe are the (often unmet) needs of incarcerated people. More specifically, intending to learn what COs desired in the design of a new replacement prison in a Canadian Atlantic province, we found COs emphasized meeting prison residents’ unmet needs – often over their own – with results centralizing incarcerated people’s physical and mental health needs, availability of meaningful rehabilitative, vocational, and cultural-specific programming, and access to recreation and fresh air. We discuss the actualization of each programmatic construct, recognizing prison society is unique and programming and practices must respond to the positionality of incarcerated people and their lived experiences rather than normative ideals about social living.