With Dignity for All: Human Dignity as “Win-Win” in Correctional Settings

• In Event: Prison Working Group: Prison climate and quality of life

Abstract

Correctional officers (“COs”) are unique in the way they have regular and one-on-one contact with those in prison, and those routine interactions with incarcerated individuals make correctional officers a critical element in shaping the culture behind bars.

Unfortunately, prison workers by and large report profound dissatisfaction with their jobs. Prison work is often stigmatized and correctional officers are often overworked and underpaid. It is no surprise, then, that these conditions manifest in COs’ cynicism about the incarcerated. In many correctional settings, a negative feedback loop is created and persists: job-related stress and subpar working conditions lead to CO cynicism about the goals and purposes of incarceration, which helps to worsen conditions behind bars.

This paper proposes that attention to the human dignity of those behind bars is not opposed to or at odds with efforts to recognize the dignity, and improve the condition of, those who work in correctional institutions. Many corrections officers believe otherwise: They assert that efforts to improve prison conditions are bought at the expense of their pay, security, and prestige. They oppose rehabilitative-focused prison reforms as unnecessary, wasteful, dangerous, and above all without any benefit for them.

But research suggests the opposite: Evidence suggests that correctional officers who endorsed more rehabilitative attitudes had lower levels of job stress, while those who endorsed more punitive attitudes had higher levels. And in the United States, the history of the implementation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act over the past two decades strongly supports the thesis that reforms focused on the human dignity of those behind bars has direct benefits for COs and other prison workers, as well. This suggests that a focus on human dignity and improved conditions in prisons is not an “either-or,” but a “both-and” situation.

Author

• Arthur Rizer, Oxford University Centre for Criminology