The Effects of Prison Segregation on Correctional Work and Organizational Culture

• In Event: Correctional Officers’ Perceptions of Safety and Security: Implications for Prison Policy and Practice

Abstract

With Bill-C83 passed in 2019, federal penitentiaries in Canada adopted a new correctional model of incarceration referred to as the “Structure Intervention Unit” (SIUs in the plural form) to replace solitary confinement. In contrast with solitary, SIUs allow prison residents to spend time outside their cells and have meaningful human contact. The introduction of SIUs was intended to alter the power of segregation from punitive to rehabilitative, representing a remarkable achievement for advancing human rights in Canada. However, a preliminary report from 2020 revealed federal penitentiaries, despite a few exceptions, were unable to fully comply with Bill C-83 for reasons that remain largely unexplained but likely include operational challenges. Noncompliance with Bill C-83 deserves rigorous understanding and analysis—particularly if the SIU impedes or provides barriers to compliance—which collectively defeats the SIUs’ goal of contributing to a more humane prison system. Our article discusses the impact of SIUs on correctional work, particularly correctional officers’ safety perceptions, sources of stress, views of prison, wellness, and workplace culture. To accomplish our research, we interviewed 75 correctional officers from the 15 federal penitentiaries that have already fully implemented SIUs. Outcomes include informing correctional training and the likely implementation of SIUs in Canada’s provincial and territorial correctional systems.

Authors

• Marcella Siqueira Cassiano, University of Winnipeg

• Rosemary Ricciardelli, Memorial University