What kind of personal and professional skills are required to be an effective prison officer - Essay Example

THE PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL SKILLS REQUIRED TO BE AN EFFECTIVE PRISON OFFICER Introduction Prison officers in the United Kingdom also known asguards, wardens or correctional officers in the United States and other countries, directly look after prisoners everyday. There are over 25,000 prison officers in England and Wales spending their professional lifetime of 30 or more years working in prisons (Coyle 2005). Prison is a coercive institution and prison officers are forces “of social control whose first obligation to the organization is that of supervision, security and control” (Griffin 2001: 98) of the inmates. Though the concept of prison as an agent of punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation changes recurrently over time, one constant purpose of prison is custody or segregating prisoners from the rest of society in different degrees of confinement. “Work in prisons does not have a high public profile” (Coyle 2005: 83), and in many countries prison officers are poorly paid, inadequately trained, and do not draw public respect. At the same time, Sir Beith (2009) asserts that a significant proportion of prison officers join the service considering it as their vocation, and with a genuine commitment to working constructively with prisoners. Hence, despite their own uncertain status and future prospects, skilled prison officers make a positive difference in their workplace. By using appropriate measures and supportive strategies, they provide valuable assistance for improving prisoners’ behaviour for living peacefully and compliantly within the prison system and for promoting prisoners’ life skills. Further, effective prison officers take charge of vocational training and guidance oriented towards prisoners pursuing a law-abiding life in the outside world after release (Coyle 2005). Thesis Statement: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the personal and professional skills required to be an effective prison officer. Historical Development in the Role of Prison Officers “Historically, the prison officer was simply a turnkey, required to keep prisoners securely and ensure they behaved in a more or less orderly fashion” (Sir Beith 2009: 5). Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the purpose of imprisonment changed from simple punishment to moral reformation. However, the role of the prison officer within this framework had not been clearly delineated. In 1935 the introduction of prison staff training however focused more on the security features of the role rather than on reformative or rehabilitative characteristics. The first changes in the role of prison officer as more than a simple turnkey or guard occurred with the introduction of Borstal or Young Offenders’ institutions run by the Prison Service in the early twentieth century to reform seriously delinquent young people. From the beginning Borstal officers were expected to get to know the prisoners in their care and help them cope with life after their release. The Borstal officers were required to work closely with the house masters to create a positive atmosphere within their houses. While some staff were recruited directly to work in Borstals, others were relocated from prisons, and interchanges of staff between both establishments occurred commonly with their promotions. The “ethos of the Borstal officer with his civilian clothes instead of a uniform and his less regimented attitude” (Coyle, 2005, p.85) introduced the concept of staff working more proactively with prisoners. In the first half of the twentieth century there was increasing emphasis on the principle of rehabilitation or reform of prisoners to prepare them for living as normal citizens after release. Various specialist staff were introduced into the prison system including “welfare officers, work instructors, teachers, psychologists and assistant governors” (Coyle, 2005, p.85). For most prison officers the recruitment of the various specialist staff only emphasized on the fact that their own role primarily remained a custodial one; it included the more difficult tasks of ensuring discipline, imposing control, and inflicting punishment when required. However, during this entire period there was a growing difference between the officially stated role of the prison officer and the tasks he was expected to do in practice. During the early twentieth century the importance of providing prisoners with opportunities for reform was stressed upon. Subsequent to the introduction of the Borstal system there was increasing conviction that similar to juvenile delinquents, “adult prisoners could also be reformed by the experience of imprisonment if only they were subjected to the correct pressures” (Coyle 2005: 85). To reform prisoners, two main initiatives were considered necessary. These included modification of the absolute regimentation of prisons and treatment of prisoners in a more humane manner such as permitting them to interact with one another, and secondly the new specialist staff were to work with prisoners throughout the day in classrooms, workshops, and interview rooms to increase their life skills and to develop their personalities, thereby enabling them to have better prospects for their future, once free from imprisonment. Key Feature: Relationship Between Prison Officers and Prisoners In relation to improved interactions between prison officers and prisoners, Kettle (2011) reiterates that he gathered from his interview of Christine Thomas, prison officer at a high security prison, that there is increased communication today with the development of the prison officer’s role. Contact is made at least twice weekly, and the entries are updated. Establishing useful communication proves to be beneficial for the inmates, such as prison officers helping prisoners read and write letters. By maintaining a form of easy accessibility, the prison officer puts the prisoners at ease to discuss all matters of concern to them. On the other hand, Coyle (2005) argues that the outcomes of these changes on the tasks carried out by prison officers was significant. Their responsibility of “controlling the prisoners, minimizing the risk of escape, and ensuring there was always good order” (Coyle 2005: 86) was made increasingly more difficult by the senior prison authorities who did not take into consideration the nature of the high risk prisoners and the need to maintain strict discipline among them at all times. According to Griffin (2001), correctional officers are the primary agents of the prison organization. Their duties of control, custody and security of inmates place their role as keepers and adversaries of the inmates, characterized as one of structured conflict. By virtue of this relationship prison officers have to remain alert to anticipate and respond to different threatening and dangerous situations such as actual infractions as well as potential violations. Although readiness to use force is a central and core part of the prison officer’s job, there is no inherent potential for its misuse or abuse by the use of force as threat or punishment. Further, it is not the preferred method of the prison officer to achieve the inmates’ compliance. This is supported by the view that prisoners do not comply to coercive power, but only to legitimate power and expert power. Additionally, Griffin (2001) states that the increase in a prison officer’s readiness to use force against inmates epitomizes the officer’s approach towards controlling the prison inmates. Moreover, following the recommedations of the Woolf committee in 1991, the role of the prison officer has professionalized. There is an improved alignment between the aims of the prison and those of the prison officers. Officers have become more comfortable with the public protection requirements, and by integrating their security and care roles, they undergo less role conflicts. On the other hand, the number of prisoners in England and Wales has increased by 30 percent in the decade between 1997 to 2007 from approximately 60,000 to over 84,000. Thus, with the exponential growth in prison populations, along with prison sentences becoming more complicated, “what prisoners need from prison officers has become much more demanding, so the knowledge base of prison officers is becoming more out of date” (Sir Beith 2009: 5). Additionally, there has been no corresponding increase in the number of prison officers to keep up with the spiralling numbers of prisones. The role of prison officer has also become more demanding due to private sector competition experimenting with the lowest thresholds for staff numbers, remuneration and other factors. Further, prison officers are more closely monitored by external management. Due to overcrowding and other reasons, prison experience can tend to make offenders even worse, increasing the possibility of their re-offending. Therefore, it is crucial to use prison resources only for holding those who pose an actual danger to the public, and the rehabilitation of such offenders so that they pose less of a threat to the public by the time they are released (Sir Beith 2009). Effective Prison Officers: Their Personal and Professional Skills The role of the prison officer is much more demanding, complicated and including several requirements than is generally believed. Correctional staff guide, mentor, facilitate, develop and watch prisoners. With the greatest proximity and frequency of contact with prisoners, prison officers are the main providers of help to prisoners requiring “assistance with a job, getting along with others, programming, interacting with staff, or obtaining privileges” (Liebling, Price & Schefer 2011: 78). Most of the daily work of prison officers relate to the accomplishment of routines such as unlocking, delivering meals, counting, moving, receiving, discharging, observing and locking up. Some essential characteristics of effective prison officers include confidence in action and communication with others, and in steering and managing prisoners. Other qualities that make for effective prison officers are personal strength, resourcefulness, multiskills, loyalty and pride. Moreover, they can deal effectively with challenging, unpredictable prisoners who other officers may find difficult to deal with (Liebling et al 2011). On a daily basis, prison officers are expected “to balance the competing demands of rehabilitation and security” (Sir Beith 2007: 15), and include the agenda of disciplining prisoners. Prison officers work in a system that is under pressure over which they have no control. Further, the prison system contains some of the most difficult and dangerous people in society, as well as the most saddest and most vulnerable. With the help of teamwork and judgment prison officers prevent the eruption of violent confrontations and defuse those that are inevitable. The Prison Governors Association state that prison officers have a set of skills and abilities called as “jail craft”. The work of prison officer “demands extensive life skills which allow him or her to build appropriate and positive relationships with the prisoners in his or her care” (Sir Beith 2007: 60). To equip and deploy prison officers most effectively, it is essential to provide for both policy makers and senior prison management an explanation of the perceptions and realities of prison officers’ jail craft. These include the facts that skilled prison work is not common sense, it is learned knowledgeable work, “it depends on fine judgments made almost without thinking about the demeanour, tone, language and feelings of prisoners” (Sir Beith 2009: 15). Outstanding prison officer work is difficult to measure because its outcome is the absence of trouble. Prison officers often perform optimally when they do not use their formal power fully, while at the same time they do not relinquish their authority. This balancing act of avoiding rigid over-enforcement as well as lenience, requires their cultivation of exceptional working strategies. The defining feature of prison is the relationship between prison officers and the prisoners with whom they work. Hence, “for officers to have a positive impact on prisoners it will be necessary for officers to engage with prisoners over time” (Beith 2009: 16), across different types of behaviours displayed, strongly retaining their authority and their boundaries, while avoiding prisoners’ manipulation to achieve their needs. This is not easy because prisoners have different and multiple needs, and one size is unlikely to fit all; hence each prisoner should be approached as an individual case with a focus on rehabilitation to stop recidivism and reoffending. It is evident that for achieving more successful staff-prisoner relationships, there should be a greater number of interventions in terms of “more specific programmes, more contact with people outside through probation and the community” (Kettle 2011: 7). These features are likely already present in low-category establishments, along with a greater undertaking of one-to-one work, and more programmes adapted to those with learning difficulties. At the same time, there are some gaps in provision, for example the Focus programme for drug and alcohol abusers is a high-intensity six-month course. For those prisoners that need a less intense programme, there are programmes that suit their requirements. Further, prison officers help in facilitating interventions such as those for offenders with a lower intelligence quotient. Similarly they adapt programmes for achieving specific outcomes or tailor them for particular prisoners. An important issue pertaining to the development of positive relationships between prison officers and prisoners, is the potential gap identified between policy makers or senior management who formulate standards and rules and prison officers who have to implement them. The policy makers tend to be legalistic when making the rules which apply to the entire prison population or one section of it for example drug-addicts or prisoners who self-harm. Contrastingly, prison officers are expected to implement these rules in real-life situations. “Effective officers are able to use discretion in how they apply rules to individuals, while ensuring consistency and fairness by staying within lines drawn by the recognition of broad principles” (Sir Beith 2009: 16). A good prison officer’s principles will include the consideration of individual prisoners’ circumstances before imposing a sanction, thus underusing power for more effective results. To optimize outcomes, the pro-social work of prison officers will be supplemented with work related to education and addressing offending behaviour. It will also require sufficient time because working with an offender with a whole battery of diagnosed and undiagnosed problems cannot be swiftly dealt with (Sir Beith 2009). Researchers conducted an ethnographic study of Grendon prison twenty years ago in which they “examined the incongruous cohabitation of a prison and a therapeutic community” (Genders & Player 2010: 431) in a single establishment. They concluded that the partnership between the two institutions was inevitably unequal, and that whilst the prison allowed the therapeutic community influence in certain areas, the prison system’s rules prevailed when its institutional interests were threatened. When the authors revisited the establishment in 2010, to observe how the relationship between penal and therapeutic functions had evolved over the last 20 years, they noted that considerable changes had occurred. The broader changes in penal policy were negotiated within the institution, and had impacted on the “ability of the therapeutic communities to maintain their authority, legitimacy and therapeutic integrity” (Genders & Player 2010: 431). The authors advocated protection of therapeutic work in prisons. The Ministry of Justice underscores the long-term use of the concepts outlined in 1985, of prison officers maintaining dynamic security for the community and within the prison, engaging prisoners individually, and gaining both a material and intuitive insight into the operation of the prison. On the other hand, it is evident that the current situation in the prison system does not permit the use of the above approach. The development of effective officer-prisoner relationships is expected to be further frustrated by the government’s plans for prison building and prison workforce modernisation. Effective officer-prisoner relationships yield maximum benefits during the handling of stressful prison incidents, and also contribute to long-term behavioural reform (Sir Beith 2009). Other interventions would include establishing links back into the community through probation. Following offending behaviour courses, postprogramme reviews conducted with probation officers. Teleconferencing is “less easy in high security prisons, where often a prisoner may not know who their probation officer is” (Kettle 2011: 8). Prison Officers’ Stress and Burnout in Working with Prisoners Prison officers’ or correctional officers’ work stress were related to factors such as leadership, job environment and job satisfaction. Research conducted by Dial, Downey and Goodwin (2010) surveyed correctional officers, and examined the extent to which gender and generation impacted job stress. The evidence from the study indicated that gender is a significant factor regarding work-related stress, and is more important than any other demographic variables. Additionally, generation influenced work stress to some extent. The overall relationship among demographic factors, prison officer dynamic attributes, and job stress need to be determined through future studies. According to Schaufeli and Peeters’ (2000) investigations of occupational stress and burnout in correctional institutions from a literature review of prison systems in nine countries, there is prevalence of various stress reactions among prison officers. Similarly, the authors studied the turnover and absenteeism rates, psychosomatic diseases, and levels of job satisfaction and burnout. Empirical evidence related to ten specific stressors in the prison officer’s job revealed that the most significant stressors included “role problems, work overload, demanding social contacts with prisoners, colleagues and supervisors, and poor social status” (Schaufeli & Peeters 2000: 19). It was found that improving human resources, management, professionalization of the prison officer’s job, and improvement of the social work environment provided a promising approach ato reducing job stress and burnout in prison systems. Evidence from research in the 1980s indicated that women correctional officers experienced greater job-related stress than their male counterparts, state Carlson, Anson and Thomas (2003). The authors conducted a study of 277 correctional officers administered the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). Earlier studies using the inventory have confirmed reliability of the scale. In contrast to earlier stress studies carried out in the 1980s, women prison officers demonstrated a greater sense of job-related personal achievement and sense of accomplishment than their male counterparts. This reveals a decline in women being affected by the stresses inherent in their work, as compared to male prison officers’ perception of stress impacts on themselves. Additionally, women’s job satisfaction appears to have increased in relation to men. However, both men and women prison officers were found to be homogenous groups in their ratings on emotional exhaustion and depersonalization (Carlson et al 2003). Gender and Prison Officers’ Competence The inclusion of women officers in Her Majesty’s Prison Service caused the emergence of various questions regarding women’s capability to perform the traditional male role of prison officer. Existing research does not confirm whether female prison officers are as competent as male prison officers, and the existence of gender differences in job performance. A study investigated prisoners’ perceptions of male and female prison officers’ performance. It was hypothesized that the overall competence and professionalism ratings would not differ for men and women officers. However, it was expected that there would be differences in the way men and women were perceived to perform their roles. It was expected that women should be rated as more “communicative, more empathic and less disciplining” (Boyd & Grant 2005: 65). Since women first entered men’s prisons, questions bout their abilities, and appropriateness of female correctional officers working in adult men’s correctional institutions have been raised. Researchers have shown that there are few differences in the quality of work or productivity between men and women. In relation to this concept, Tewksbury and Collins (2006: 327) undertook a study to evaluate “self-reported perceptions of differences in aggressive responses to instances of inmate challenges and misbehaviour”. They found that there were no differences in the responses elicited from men and women, and only three variables of job title, height, and having minor children predicted any difference in staff responses. Further, although female prison officers reported job-related stress to a higher level than did males, job stress was not related to likelihood of aggressive responses. The Prison Officer Competency Rating Scale (PORS) was used by 57 adult male prisoners. “There was no significant difference in the prisoners’ ratings of overall competence of men and women officers” (Boyd & Grant 2005: 65). In the subcategories of Discipline and Control, Communication, or Empathy there were no gender differences. On the other hand, there was considerable difference in Professionalism, with women being rated as more professional, by the prisoners in the study sample. Thus, the lack of any differences in the areas noted above, among men and women prison officers underscores the fact that both genders are performing their jobs in a similar manner in many respects. Women were rated as more professional in relation to respecting privacy and keeping calm under difficult situations. However, these areas may have inherent gender biases, irrespective of work with prisoners. Conclusion This paper has highlighted the personal and professional skills of effective prison officers. The historical development of the role of prison officers reveals that their earlier function of guard and turnkey transformed to a more effective and multidimensional role of guide, mentor, agent of discipline, and confidante. Additionally, prison officers continue their traditional functions of maintaining the security of the outside community by holding offenders in prison, as well as ensuring the security of the prison system and caring for the inmates. Maintaining a good relationship with prisoners is a key responsibility of prison officers. Examining their job stress, as well as competence based on gender, the evidence indicates that women are increasingly achieving higher levels of job satisfaction in their work as prison officers, as compared to men; similarly their competence levels were also higher as compared to their male counterparts Prison officers are powerful as well as vulnerable, and they rely on their personal and communication skills to perform their role effectively. They aspire to achieve a sense of satisfaction by doing their work optimally. Liebling et al (2011: 81) reiterate that effective prison officers “want to use and develop their skills, be valued as part of a team” and to carry out their primarily public service role with confidence and professional skill. Fully involved in their work, they aspire to make a difference to the prison system. Despite low pay, poor working conditions, inherent conflicts in their work, lack of a proper status to their jobs, effective prison officers work hard because of an inner calling that motivates them. This quality may transcend all the other essential characteristics that effective prison officers have been found to have. Bibliography Boyd, E. & Grant, T. (2005). Is gender a factor in perceived prison officer competence? Male prisoners’ perceptions in an English dispersal prison. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, 15 (1): pp.65-74. Carlson, J.R., Anson, R.H. & Thomas, G. (2003). Correctional officer burnout and stress: Does gender matter? The Prison Journal, 83 (3): pp.277-288. Coyle, A. (2005). Understanding prisons: Key issues in policy and practice. England: Open University Press. Dial, K.C., Downey, R.A. & Goodlin, W.E. (2010). The job in the joint: The impact of Generation and gender on work stress in prison. Journal of Criminal Justice, 38 (4): pp.609-615. Genders, E. & Player, E. (2010). Therapy in prison: Revisiting Grendon 20 years on. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 49 (5): pp.431-450. Griffin, M.L. (2001). The use of force by detention officers. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing. Liebling, A., Price, D. & Schefer, G. (2011). The prison officer. Edition 2. The United Kingdom: Taylor and Francis. Schaufeli, W.B. & Peeters, M.C. (2000). Job stress and burnout among correctional officers: A literature review. International Journal of Stress Management, 7 (1): pp. 19-48. Sir Beith, A. (2009). Role of the prison office: Twelfth report of session 2008- 09, report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence. Justice Committee, House of Commons, Pariliament. Great Britain: The Stationery Office Publications. Kettle, M. (July 2011). Interview: Prison officer in a high security prison. Prison Service Journal, Special Edition, 196: pp.7-9. Tewksbury, R. & Collins, S.C. (2006). Aggression levels among correctional officers: Reassessing sex differences. The Prison Journal, 86 (3): pp.327-343. Read More