Unsafe: Gender-Based Staff on Staff Harassment in U.S. Prisons

• In Event: PWG - Power, identity, and abuse among prison staff

Abstract

Scholars have examined women’s roles in traditionally male dominated workforce settings, including carceral spaces, for decades. We know that women face social isolation, low levels of social support, and are often relegated to “women’s work” in corrections (Batton & Wright, 2019; Burdett et al., 2018). Scholarship also discusses obstacles faced by women who work in prisons and jails that primarily hold men, including unwanted sexual advances and sexual violence from residents (Gordon et al., 2012; Isenhardt & Hostettler, 2016). However, little is known about gender-based harassment that women experience on the job from their male colleagues in carceral facilities. In this study, we examine the experiences of 46 women working in prisons across four U.S. states. Through in-depth interviews, many women shared that their perceived risk, and actual experiences of harassment by their male colleagues, is higher and more frequent than the risk they perceive and experience from male residents. Women experienced harassment at job onset during the corrections academy and throughout their employment tenure. Their troubling narratives about gender-based harassment and discrimination suggests that a gender discriminatory culture is signaled as permissible, normative, and acceptable in carceral spaces from day one and becomes a perpetual barrier for women staff. To improve the current carceral workforce dynamics, women note that when the facility hires more women, harassment from male colleagues is perceived to decrease; but that is only a starting place to relieve this challenge. This paper speaks to the unspoken colleague-based harassment that occurs within prisons and offers staff-informed avenues for improvement.

Author

• Danielle S Rudes, Sam Houston State University