Prison Work Research Articles

Canadian correctional officers, institutionalization, and the social impacts of prison work

Researchers often use institutionalization to explain the psychological impact of imprisonment on incarcerated people, but little is known about how institutionalization processes may impact other actors in prison, such as correctional officers (COs). New research consistently describes prison work as a damaging experience, something that significantly impacts short and long-term health outcomes of COs. A broad reading of the institutionalization literature demonstrates remarkable similarities to CO mental health research, raising questions about whether institutionalization frameworks can help us understand prison work. We draw on 131 interviews with Canadian COs to examine this possibility, and find that COs draw broad institutionalization narratives framing prison work as a distinctly harmful experience with lasting impacts on their personalities, identities, and relationships. We conclude by discussing the implications of using institutionalization as a means of understanding correctional work.

Care or Complicity? Medical Personnel in Prisons.

Imprisonment may sometimes be a justified form of punishment. Yet the U.S. carceral system suffers from appalling problems of justice-in who is put into prisons, in how imprisoned people are treated, and in downstream personal and community health impacts. Medical personnel working in prisons and jails take on risky work for highly vulnerable and underserved patients. They are to be lauded for their professional commitments. Yet at the same time, prison care undercuts the ability of medical personnel to uphold their own professional standards and sometimes fails in even basic health protection. Doctors in prisons are stuck between their commitment to vulnerable patients and complicity in a system that requires their participation to uphold its constitutionality. Medical ethics is frayed in prisons, and the problem deserves our attention.

Conceptualization and Operationalization of the Concept of Moral Craftsmanship

Prison work creates ethical challenges for which a training program was initiated for Dutch prison staff to foster their Moral Craftsmanship (MCS). The concept of MCS is not yet defined and operationalized in literature. This explorative study aims to 1) define MCS, 2) identify conceptual elements of MCS, and 3) develop a measurement tool for MCS. A document and literature study provided input for the definition and selection of conceptual elements related within DCIA policy documents, identifying three conceptual levels of MCS: individual (cognition, attitude, and actions), team, and leadership. This first MCSQ consists of seventy-one items distributed across the domains: values and norms, judgment and reasoning, consultation, implementation, looking back, interactions, and leadership. We tested its usability via ‘think-aloud interviews.’ Validation of the current version of the MCS-Questionnaire and consensus among experts about what to include or exclude in the concept of MCS are needed for further development.

The Letter Cloth: Sensory Modes of the Epistolary in Prison Theatre Practice

In this article, I explore performances of letter writing within the archives of the London-based theatre company Clean Break, who work with justice-experienced women and women at risk. Clean Break’s archive at the Bishopsgate Institute in London contains an extensive collection of production ephemera and letters. Charting the company’s development across forty years of theatre productions, public advocacy, and work in prisons and community settings, these materials of the archive—strategic documents, annotated playscripts and rehearsal notes, production photography and correspondence—reveal the acute importance of the letter to people living on the immediate borderlands of the prison. Despite these generative resonances, however, the epistolary form is very rarely used in Clean Break’s theatre: as the archive reveals, since the company was founded by two women in HM Prison Askham Grange in 1979, stagings of letters have occurred in only a handful of instances. In this archival exploration of the epistolary in three works by Clean Break—a film broadcast by the BBC, a play staged at the Royal Court, and a circular chain-play written by women in three prisons—I investigate what lifeworlds beyond prison epistolary forms in performance propose.

Vaccine Literacy and “whole-of-prison” approach to increase vaccine uptake and vaccine coverage in prison settings

Abstract Prison settings are complex when it comes to healthcare services. The remit of healthcare provision may be with Ministry of Health or Ministry of Justice or combination of the two. Prison staff is also composed of custodial staff, HCW working in prison and other professionals, including educators, psychologists, etc. Within prison population deprived communities are overrepresented, and individuals often have multiple and complex health needs. Yet, equivalence to care between community and prisons is upheld by UN and European Prison Rules. In order to increase VL in prison, interventions need to respond to the existing complexity, tackling individual as well as organisational levels. Within RISE-Vac, tools have been prepared to engage prison staff and prison population. Participatory approach were used to conceptualised and develop the materials. An overview of the material content and development process will be provided, with a focus on the package tailored to PLP and the engagement of people with lived experience of incarceration.

Health-related quality of life and associated factors among prisoners in Gondar city prison, Northwest Ethiopia: Using structural equation modeling.

Prisoners usually need more comprehensive health and social support than the general population. Due to the growing number of prisoners in Ethiopia and limited access to health service, quality of life is a key concern. Compromised health-related quality of life imposes short and long-term consequences on the prisoners, their families, and the healthcare system. In Ethiopia, there are limited studies that investigate health outcomes and health-related quality of life in this particular population. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the magnitude of health-related quality of life and associated factors among prisoners considering the multidimensional nature of health related quality of life. An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted on 1,246 prisoners who were enrolled using simple random sampling. The World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQoL-BREF-26) and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) tools were used to assess the HRQoL and depression among prisoners, respectively. The relationships between exogenous, mediating, and endogenous variables were identified using structural equation modeling. As the mediation of effects were present, then the direct, indirect, and total effects were determined. General fit indices of the final model were acceptable (x2/df = 1.76, p < 0.001, RMSEA = 0.06, TLI = 0.90, CFI = 0.91, and SRMR = 0.06). The mean (standard deviation) score of the overall health related quality of life was 53.25 (15.12). Having an underlying medical condition had negative total effect on health related quality of life while visits in prison had positive total effect. Having income-generating work in prison had only a direct positive effect. Whereas, older age, being married, longer duration of imprisonment, and depression all had only a negative direct effect on one or more domains of quality of life (p<0.05). Inmates in Gondar Prison have very poor and compromised levels of physical and psychological health despite having a modest degree of overall HRQoL. The result of this study is significant for people who work in and research the prison environment because it can assist in recognizing prisoners' health needs and devising treatment procedures that take into consideration physical, psychological, environmental, and social relationship aspects.

Review of “Orange-Collar Labor: Work and Inequality in Prison”

Review of “Orange-Collar Labor: Work and Inequality in Prison”

Gender, risk, and presentation of self in “caring” prison work: Insights from institutional parole officers in Canada

AbstractWhile scholars have investigated how prison workers understand and navigate occupational risks through performances of gender, most studies have focused on staff in security roles whose organizational cultures value displays of masculinities premised on characteristics such as toughness and stoicism. Less scholarly attention has considered how prison staff in nonsecurity roles, who perform duties oriented toward using interpersonal skills and helping others—characteristics that are commonly associated with female‐dominated helping professions—understand and navigate risk through gendered forms of impression management. The current study explores the question of how one such occupational group, institutional parole officers (IPOs) working in Canadian federal prisons, performs gender in response to both their perceptions of workplace risk and their occupational, and often personal, commitment to supporting the rehabilitation of prisoners. We organize and analyze our findings using Goffman's (1959) theory of impression management to demonstrate that IPOs, as they attempt to both support prisoners and mitigate the perceived risks of a prison workplace, perform gendered presentations of self that fluidly incorporate aspects of masculinities and femininities. However, we also argue that female IPOs experience greater feelings of workplace vulnerabilities and, thus, perform more impression management labor than their male counterparts. Our analysis thus deepens the limited literature on gendered presentations of self among nonsecurity prison workers by situating gender performances within the occupational risks experienced in the prison workplace.

Captives of the “Society of Captives”: Working in Solitary Confinement

Solitary confinement may affect incarcerated persons. Yet, what is known about those who work in solitary confinement units? Drawing on Sykes’ classic, The society of captives, on the “pains of imprisonment,” we argue that solitary confinement work may adversely affect correctional personnel. This study extends prior work on deprivation theory, solitary confinement, and research on work in prison by testing this argument through analyses of qualitative data. We find that those who work in solitary confinement units report deprivations analogous to what incarcerated persons experience. The article concludes with a call for expanding theoretical and empirical research on solitary confinement and the impacts of contemporary penal practices.

Interventions to increase vaccine uptake among people who live and work in prisons: A global multistage scoping review.

The objective of this study is to examine interventions implemented to increase vaccine uptake among people who live and work in prisons around the world. Peer-reviewed and gray literature databases were searched systematically to identify relevant information published from 2012 to 2022. Publications were evaluated by two researchers independently and underwent quality assessment through established tools. Of the 11,281 publications identified through peer-reviewed (2607) and gray literature (8674) search, 17 met the inclusion criteria. In light of limited data, the identified interventions were categorized into two categories of educational and organizational interventions, and are discussed in the text. The lack of availability of vaccination services and interventions to increase vaccine uptake among people who live and work in prisons, worldwide, is a serious public health concern. These interventions reported in this review can be adapted and adopted to mitigate the burden of infectious diseases among people who live and work in prisons.

СУЧАСНИЙ СТАН РЕАЛІЗАЦІЇ ПРАВА НА ПРАЦЮ УВ’ЯЗНЕНИМИ, ЯКІ ТРИМАЮТЬСЯ В СЛІДЧИХ ІЗОЛЯТОРАХ

The article examines the issue of the current state of implementation of the right to work by prisoners held in remand detention centers of Ukraine. The concepts of prisoner and convict are given to distinguish them. It is being considered which categories of persons can be held in pretrial detention centers. The quantitative index of prisoners as of January 1, 2023 is presented in the article, who are held in pretrial detention centers and in penitentiary institutions that perform the function of pre-trial detention centers on the territory of Ukraine. The procedure for engaging prisoners to work is disclosed in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On Pretrial Detention”, as well as the Rules of the Internal Procedures of Pretrial Detention Centers of the State Criminal and Executive Service of Ukraine. The comments and recommendations made by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment during their visit to detention centers of Ukraine in different years are given. As an example, the decision of the European Court of Human Affairs, namely the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which indicates that the employment of prisoners, including providing them with certain work, should have a positive effect on their detention. In the article attention is focused on the complicated procedure of engaging in socially useful work of persons taken into custody in workshops and certain recommendations are given regarding its optimization. A proposal for the introduction of remote work in detention centers for prisoners is given, which in turn will fully expand the type of possible work for prisoners, as well as satisfy the problem of employment. The Strategy for the reform of the penitentiary system for the period until 2026 was considered, namely the issue of changing approaches to the involvement of convicts and persons taken into custody for gainful employment. Key words: prisoners, work of prisoners, employment, work, detention center, penitentiary institutions.

Disciplinary discretion, interaction and compassion: Transports between prisons from the perspective of the transporters

This study examines the interactions between correctional officers and prisoners during transport between prisons, from the staff’s perspective, based on a thematic analysis of 14 interviews with transport officers in Sweden. The three central themes in their stories regarding their work – namely, disciplinary discretion, interaction and compassion – were analysed by following the process of picking up the prisoner, interacting during the ride, and reflecting on the core components of the work. Correctional officers aim to work stepwise in building alliances, understand the prisoners’ perspective and use discretionary discipline in verbal interactions to avoid physical violence. This facilitates a calm environment and smooth execution of the task, while also ensuring the officers’ well-being. The results are in line with what is known from prison work and also reflect differences due to the limited space and time spent in transport.

Work in prisons: Considerations on racial inequalities and labor activities in Brazilian prisons

The problem of violence has been studied by several researchers who analyze contemporary society. In these debates, reflections on the involvement of young people in crime, the increase in incarceration of the black population and the importance of public policies for the prevention of this phenomenon are common. The Federal Constitution of Brazil - CRFB of 1988 and Law 7.210/84 of Penal Execution (LEP) show that educational and work activities must be carried out by the prison population, mainly because they represent efficient mechanisms in the rehabilitation of inmates. This research aims to analyze the criteria used by the penitentiaries to select the convicts considered apt to develop productive activities, verifying, above all, if the convicts' race, color, or ethnicity interfere in their possibilities of access to work activities. The methodology used consisted of the literature review produced on this topic specifically in Brazil in the last five years. The data obtained revealed aspects that allow the permanence of an unequal society, which violates rights guaranteed in the Magna Carta and in the Criminal Executions Law. Among them, the persistence of racial inequalities in prisons, the overcrowding and precariousness in prisons and, above all, the neglect of the public power in not expanding policies aimed at resocialization, stand out. In view of this, the need for the State to intervene in this reality is identified by implementing public policies capable of collaborating with the effectiveness of basic guarantees guaranteed to all citizens, including those who are under deprivation of liberty.

Fantastical Authenticity in Correctional Officer Recruitment Videos

ABSTRACT Criminal justice agencies increasingly recruit new personnel online using social media. This paper analyzes correctional officer recruitment videos appearing on YouTube. Engaging with literature on social media representations and authenticity, we examine the content and the themes appearing in these videos. We use a grounded theory approach to data analysis accompanied by a semiotic reading of these video texts. We argue that these video representations convey a sense of fantastical authenticity, meaning there is a mythical or embellished dimension to these depictions and accounts. We also find that these videos communicate establishment narratives about prisons and prison work. We also situate our analysis in broader literature on social media use and communications by criminal justice agencies. We conclude with reflections on what this means for understanding representations of criminal justice as well as social media use by prison authorities in North America.

The mental health of staff working in UK prisons during the Covid‐19 pandemic

AbstractThis article presents the results of an opportunistic, cross‐sectional, self‐report survey of the well‐being of staff working in prisons throughout the UK. The survey was completed by 594 participants in the early part of 2021 at the height of the Covid‐19 pandemic. Self‐report measures indicated concerning levels of burnout and 43.4% of participants were above the established cut‐offs on the Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD‐7) scale. Eighty‐one per cent reported that their mental and physical health had deteriorated and many said emotional support was lacking. Further research is required to establish how typical and persistent these concerns are.

Labor Activity of Convicts in Conditions of Humanization of Imprisonment in Late 18&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; — Early 21&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt; Centuries (Western Siberia)

The experience of attracting convicts to work in West Siberian prisons, including those located on the territory of the Arctic zone of Yugra in the late 18th — early 21st centuries, is considered. It is noted that this experience was introduced as part of the humanization of the penitentiary system according to the European model. The authors introduce the concept of “three-phase model” of humanization of the prison. The thesis is substantiated that in the history of Russia this model was implemented three times and necessarily included new principles for organizing the work of prisoners. The results of the last reform, which took place in 2010—2020 are compared with previous reforms and general patterns characteristic of Russia are identified. The purpose of the article is to determine the relationship between the model of work in places of detention and the stages of weakening / strengthening of political power. The study is carried out through the analysis of the organization of work of prisoners, since this factor is an indicator of the state of the law enforcement system, and it reflects the degree of stability of state power as a whole. The study concluded that in the conditions of Russia, the principles of organizing the work of prisoners should correspond to the ideas of justice that are characteristic of the Russian people. The authors argue that the “three-phase model” implemented several times for the humanization of the prison according to the European model always entails negative consequences for the Russian statehood.

The Role of Legal Clinics in Promoting Human Rights: The Experience of Nigeria Law School Yenagoa Law Clinic and The Legal Support and Care Centre at GD Goenka University School of Law Gurgaon India

Legal clinics are playing a very prominent role in promoting human rights and filling global access to justice gaps through justice education. In turn, they provide access to justice for the poor and marginalized in fulfilment of this social justice mandate. Clinicians realize that human rights and justice education is key to their social justice mission. Apart from adding statements about the importance of justice to their mission statement, clinics have in place programs fundamentally oriented around a vision of justice. Students in clinics play very important roles in achieving their clinics’ social justice mission and goals by sensitizing youths, women, children, inmates and citizens to change thought processes and mold the social fabric needed for a just society, promoting a culture of lawfulness through generating solutions to several social issues that results in good citizenship, improved policies, good governance, access to justice and effective remedies. Generally, the objective of this paper is to share case studies from the Nigerian Law School Yenagoa Legal Clinic, the Legal Support and Care Centre at GD Goenka University and Legal Aid Society at The NorthCap University, Gurugram, Haryana, India of how legal clinics are promoting human rights, access to justice, a culture of lawfulness and sustainable development through their work in communities, schools and prisons. The first section lays a background on the role of law in shaping society, the second focuses on the conceptual and theoretical frameworks. The third section examines the framework that provides the mandate education for justice and human rights. The fourth section assesses the role of law schools and clinics in promoting education for justice, human rights and a culture of lawfulness while the fifth section deals with conclusions and recommendations.

Incidence and Predictors of COVID-19 Infection in Prison Healthcare Workers.

The aim of the study is to assess the predictors of SARS-CoV-2 infection among correctional healthcare workers (HCWs). We conducted a retrospective chart review to describe the demographic and workplace characteristics of New Jersey correctional HCWs between March 15, 2020, and August 31, 2020, using univariate and multivariable analysis. Among 822 HCWs, patient-facing staff had the highest incidence of infection (7.2%). Associated risk factors include being Black and working in a maximum-security prison. There were few statistically significant findings due to small total numbers ( n = 47) that tested positive. Correctional HCWs' challenging work environment creates unique risk factors for infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Administrative measures taken by the department of corrections may have a significant role in curbing the spread of infection. The findings can help focus preventive measures for reducing the spread of COVID-19 in this unique population.

The mental wellbeing of prison staff in England during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional study.

COVID-19 is likely to have had an impact on the mental wellbeing of prison staff because of the high risk for infectious disease outbreaks in prisons and the pre-existing high burden of mental health issues among staff. A cross-sectional study of staff within 26 prisons in England was carried out between 20th July 2020 and 2nd October 2020. Mental wellbeing was measured using the Short-version of Warwick-Edinburgh Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS). Staff wellbeing was compared to that of the English population using indirectly standardised data from the Health Survey for England 2010-13 and a one-sample t-test. Multivariate linear regression modelling explored associations with mental wellbeing score. Two thousand five hundred and thirty-four individuals were included (response rate 22.2%). The mean age was 44 years, 53% were female, and 93% were white. The sample mean SWEMWBS score was 23.84 and the standardised population mean score was 23.57. The difference in means was statistically significant (95% CI 0.09-0.46), but not of a clinically meaningful level. The multivariate linear regression model was adjusted for age category, sex, ethnicity, smoking status, occupation, and prison service region. Higher wellbeing was significantly associated with older age, male sex, Black/Black British ethnicity, never having smoked, working within the health staff team, and working in certain prison regions. Unexpectedly, prison staff wellbeing as measured by SWEMWBS was similar to that of the general population. Reasons for this are unclear but could include the reduction in violence within prisons since the start of the pandemic. Qualitative research across a diverse sample of prison settings would enrich understanding of staff wellbeing within the pandemic.

Michael Gibson-Light, Orange-Collar Labor. Work and Inequality in Prison

Michael Gibson-Light, Orange-Collar Labor. Work and Inequality in Prison