Custody and Conflict: An Organizational Study of Prison Officers' Roles and Attitudes

Abstract

The study reports on survey research into prison officers' attitudes in the Western Australian Department of Corrections. Drawing on research on a variety of organizations, which provides evidence for the prevalence of “occupational orientations” or “task orientations” among employees, the research tested for significant and systematic relationships between prison officers' attitudes and the characteristics of their organizational roles and role problems. Three commonly observed attitudes of prison officers are their reliance on disciplinary authority, their negative stereotyping of inmates, and their antagonism towards non-custodial staff. The research findings support the hypothesis that such attitudes are directly related to the primary task of prison officers as confining inmates in custody and the conflict with inmates which arises from performing the custodial task. The characteristics and demands of the work itself evidently comprise an important variable in explaining prison officers' attitudes, whereas in most published research on prisons this factor is largely neglected.