Penology Lecture 2 --> The Prison Officer
- Created by: EmilyEther
- Created on: 06-10-20 15:54
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- The Prison Officer
- The PO
- To act in 'loco-parentis'
- Carrying out 'mundane' tasks in prisons
- Caring for the well-being of prisoners
- Home Office (1984) - ‘relationships between staff and prisoners are at the heart of the whole prison system’
- 'Practical Consciousness' - Giddens '84
- Typical PO = white British, male, aged 30-40 with about 10~ years experience (Liebling and Price 2001)
- 'Low visibility' yet 'highly skilled'
- Many join the prison service due to economic pragmatism (nice pay etc) and ‘self-other actualisation’ (potential for personal growth). Many share the sense of self-efficacy (self belief)
- Creating a 'Relationship' with Prisoners
- Officers’ approach to their role set the tone on a wing and relationships between and with prisoners
- Home Office (1984) - ‘relationships between staff and prisoners are at the heart of the whole prison system’
- Chief Inspector of Prisons, ‘prisoners are people, not merely offenders; and the turning points in their lives are usually people, not just programmes or plans’
- Good rels between POs and prisoners can promote 'healthy social behaviours and values'
- 'Relationships with prisoners are procedural and instrumental, promoting social distance and constructing prisoners as dangerous, difficult to manage, untrustworthy, violent, manipulative and disingenuous' (Arnold 2008)
- The Role of Humour
- POs decide which rules apply (tactility, with humour) to negotiate accommodations for prisoners in order to maintain a reasonable and functional social order
- Humour can encourage healthy behaviours with prisoners and help them to leave behind bitter feelings they have about the system so that they don't re-offend
- Humorous exchanges between officers and prisoners enable officers to briefly meet prisoners as equals, and to manage relationships without conflict, as well as to express hostility towards their peers
- Emotions
- Crawley: ‘becoming a PO is inextricably tied up with the management of certain emotions’: anxiety, stress, sympathy, fear & anger. Officers are expected to remain emotionally detached … and indifferent.’
- Often confuse having emotion with being emotional
- Emotional Intelligence testing
- The highest scores were for stress tolerance, assertiveness, happiness and reality testing; the lowest scores were for empathy, social responsibility and optimism
- The Prison Environment
- General feelings of low trust in the prison setting has diffused to low trust among POs
- Lack of sense of brotherhood
- The current penological climate, with increasing prison populations, continuing budget cuts and reductions in staff numbers, presents a challenging time for POs
- The PO
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