Race & Employee Sanctions: Institutional Responses to Correctional Officer Behavior

• In Event: Staff Misconduct in Prison

Abstract

Criminal justice scholarship has long recognized the pervasiveness of racial/ethnic disparities. However, few have explored how the behavior of criminal justice actors across the system contribute to internal systemic bias. Even fewer have examined how institutional responses to employee behavior can perpetuate racial/ethnic disparities across the system. This study proposes the institutional response model of social control to address these gaps in the literature. Applying the model to official data from a Mid-Atlantic Department of Correction, results show that institutional context variables (e.g. tenure, position) are influential in determining whether employees have disciplinary sanctions in their file. However, employees who are Black or high-school educated are more likely to receive a greater number of sanctions in their files than their counterparts. These results suggest that a correctional employee’s demographic traits are more influential in the amount of penal social control applied by the institution. Translational implications and future research are also discussed.

Author

• TaLisa J. Carter, American University