In Quest of a Lost Father? Inmates' Preferences of Staff Relation in a Psychiatric Prison Ward

Abstract

The findings presented in the following paper suggest that staff members and prison inmates do not agree regarding preferred qualities of staff-inmate relationships. Staff members believe that the crucial relationship qualities in the context of a correctional institution are involvement; support; inmate autonomy; an antiauthoritarian position; and that the relationship should be of a friendly, informal nature, with a low degree of staff control of inmates. By contrast, prison inmates prefer to experience a staff member as an authoritarian patron in an apparent wish to be controlled by a clear, definite set of rules and expectations. It would appear that with regard to the inmates, the slightly modified Goffmanian style of relationship, especially as it pertains to definite boundaries, endures and perhaps predominates. The research was conducted in the psychiatric ward of the Mental Health and Clinical Criminology Center affiliated with the Israel Prison Service.