Ethnographic experiences of participating in a correctional officer training program: An exploration of values,ethics,and role conflict

Abstract

In the current article, I reflect on data from an ethnographic study at the National Training Academy of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), where I participated in the correctional officer training program (CTP) with the objective to gain appreciation for the many realities of the training process and content. Reflecting on experiences as a uniformed participant in the 14-week in-person component of the program, I describe the challenges tied to starting an immersive ethnography midcareer and unpack the central ethical dilemmas shaping data collection and article preparation. First, I speak to what it means to be part of the 14-week job interview with 24 other individuals, with a strong emphasis on how participant values and ethics align with those of the organization and the challenges of consent. Next, I unpack the complexities across relationships that emerge in doing ethnographies in an organization with a hierarchical structure, specifically the role conflict between being a researcher (e.g., working in partnership with CSC) and participant (e.g., doing the training). As an ethnographer, I did not want to affect the experiences or outcomes of other recruits, but my presence may have influenced them regardless of my intentions. I conclude by highlighting implications for further consideration when conducting ethnographic work in partnerships with organizations of justice.

Introduction

In prison scholarship, most ethnographic or “semi-ethnographic” (Crewe, 2006: 395) studies focus on prisoners’ experiences, generally conducting interviews alongside participation observation or fieldwork (e.g., Comfort, 2002; Earle and Phillips, 2012; Mjåland, 2016; Waldram, 2007). For instance, Comfort (2002) engaged in “intensive field observation” (p. 467) in the visitor-waiting area of San Quentin State Prison in California and conducted 50 interviews with women whose partners were incarcerated at the prison. Her objectives included understanding how prison also operates as a domestic space—it becomes “Papa’s House”—as everyday activities, including typically private behaviors, play out in visitation spaces.

The immersive-ness of an ethnographic experience varies, but fully immersive (however conceptualized, see Adler and Adler, 1987a), ethnographic studies directed at the study of adult prisoners or correctional officers (COs) remain less common. Ethnographies with COs, like those with prisoners, tend to include participant observation, field studies, and interviews (Burdett et al., 2018; Crawley, 2004; Ricciardelli, 2019). Gariglio (2016) added the visual method of photo-elicitation to interviews with prison officers as part of a prison ethnography in Italy. Page (2008) attended several of California Correctional Peace Officers Association’s annual membership conventions, workshops, rallies, legislative hearings, and informal gathering at the union headquarters.

In the current study, I speak to my experiences participating in a CO training program, but my focus is on the ethical and moral challenges that I struggled with during an ethnographic experience that included living in a dorm among recruits and participating in a training program to become a federal Canadian CO. The training including modules on de-escalation, mental health, communication skills, law and policy, arrest and control, firearms, self-defense, as well as learning diverse posts in prison, decision-based training scenarios, chemical agents, first officer on-scene, among other topics. Following modules is testing, in which a score below 70% results in a “strike,” where if a recruit earns three strikes they are discharged from the academy, but they can try again immediately by returning to restart the correctional officer training program (CTP). Thus, failing to graduate from the CTP does happen as recruits undergo over 50 tests. In the current study, I speak to what it means to be part of the 14-week job interview that is the CTP. I unpack my experiences finding “a convincing and acceptable research role” (King, 2000: 300). Recognizing and reflecting on the fact that I was present and thus having some effect on the training experiences of other recruits, I explore navigating the ethics of being part of other peoples’ career paths and flesh out the emphasis and efforts of Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) toward ensuring recruit values and ethics align with those of the organization. I then unpack the complexities across relationships that emerge in doing ethnographies in an organization with a hierarchical organizational structure and explain the tensions around participant consent.

Situational context

Many have written about the challenges of gaining access to correctional populations or to conducting research in any realm of correctional services, including in Canada (Watson, 2015; Watson and van der Meulen, 2019; Yeager, 2008). ¹ The current project emerged in partnership with CSC’s division of Learning and Development. We agreed to develop a mixed methods study designed to inform the training of correctional staff at CSC, a component of which became my ethnographic experience of completing the CTP. Working in partnership requires mutual respect and trust, opportunity for disagreements, sharing information, and a joint commitment to positively informing the practices, policies, content, and pedagogy of the academy and thus the socialization and instruction of recruits. Thus, I had to navigate the greater organization and the commitments tied to my research alongside the culture of the society that is the training academy.

The sensations of vulnerability, bursts of confusion, and self-doubt, laced with curiosity and interest, largely describe my experience of both arriving in the field and the start of the ethnographic study. My resonating thought was that the study would have been much easier to conduct, on so many practical, personal, and applied levels, 15 years ago as part of a doctoral dissertation. Brajuha and Hallowell (1986) write “of a long tradition of sociology graduate students whose pursuit of the Ph.D. including full-time work at the fieldwork site for necessary income as well as dissertation data” (p. 456).

However, I departed for the CTP in early June of 2019—a 40-year-old with four children, the eldest having just celebrated a 10th birthday. In addition, I had a full-time job, a range of active grants—including the grant funding the current ethnographic project—graduate students to supervise, data to collect, research to oversee, articles to write, and multiple academic programs to coordinate or co-coordinate. All the challenges and complications as well as responsibilities in my life continued despite my voluntary pause from full engagement and departure to the academy for what would be my most immersive ethnographic research experience. I recall trying to put aside my concerns external to the ethnography to concentrate on the CTP. In conducting the ethnography, my emotions informed my experiences; I would engage in diverse forms of “emotional labor,” but at the onset, the “emotional culture” of the academy was very uncertain (Hochschild, 1983).

Despite my professional academic background, I was not that different from others at the CTP. Recruits had families they were leaving for a solid 14 weeks. My fellow recruits had left children, including an infant, significant others, families, friends, and loved ones, with the hope that at graduation they would be deployed to work as a CO at a federal Canadian prison. The CTP was the means to a well-paying federal government career. For all of the recruits, their occupational pursuit occurs with life happening in ways that intrude into their experiences at the CTP, distract from their focus, and be cause for homesickness, concern, hurt, anxiety, and at times distress but also support. My emotions were not unique, but, unlike my own stressors, recruits have the additional stress of making it to graduation and earning the career path. I recognized in myself that I had fears that ranged from a potential inability to leave my kids for a prolonged time-period to my performance in the CTP (I did not want to be the professor who failed a written test, for instance). I also worried as I was conducting research that I wanted to be well done and with applied contributions. I also knew my pattern of participation in the CTP was not the norm.

Given my longitudinal study underway that involved recruits, I encountered other cohorts at the academy who were familiar with me as a university professor conducting research. They wondered if I had a change of career, or what I was doing at the academy, which was particularly confusing given everyone in the CTP spends the first few weeks out of uniform (the individuals in each CTP cohort will not wear uniforms until all recruits have all pieces of their work uniform). Without my uniform, distinguishing whether I was there as a recruit or a researcher was even more muddled for observers. Moreover, I had met three of the recruits in my cohort previously; all three had not completed the CTP (due to strikes or other reasons) and had returned to the Academy anew. Thus, my presence was noticeable to some, null to many, and everyone was likely indifferent. Nonetheless, I felt like I had a spotlight shining on me but that probably was attributable to nerves not reality; a spotlight that was likely felt at times, desired or hated, by every recruit.

Unlike the other recruits, I had a few self-imposed restrictions on my participation that I decided on as a researcher prior to arriving at the academy. First, I was unable to complete 14 consecutive weeks of the CTP for professional (e.g., I had commitments within that time-period), process (e.g., the need to participate in multiple CTP cohorts and to do the primary worker (PW) training), and personal reasons. To this end, I would take “work breaks” (Freilich, 1971; Van Maanen, 1981: 478), where I would take a respite from the study (and dorm living). These periods of respite confirmed to me how immersive and consuming the CTP experience remained. Second, I had to recognize my greater dilemmas about the CTP. The first, how to navigate the fact that the researched do not necessary consent to being part of my ethnography (or part of writing up an ethnographic experience). The second tied to my relationships with my fellow CTP cohort and trainers. I am not unique, Van Maanen (1981) too felt his ethnographic work with police left him in a “bind” where moral dilemmas underpinned his experience, particularly when writing up his findings (p. 492).

Insider/outsider

Snow et al. (1986) argued that “a major rationale for conducting ethnographic research is that it yields an empathic understanding of social worlds by allowing the fieldworker to apprehend how members of those worlds act, think, and feel as they do” (p. 386). However, that understanding is very much determined by how the researcher is positioned in the field, which includes negotiating the researcher’s role on a daily basis (Jacobs, 1974). Scholars have discussed the roles ethnographers assume in the field and the implications of these roles (Gans, 1968; Gold, 1958; Junker, 1960). Some have created typologies of fieldwork roles, often focusing on diverse dimensions of the fieldwork experience (e.g., Gans, 1968; Gold, 1958). For instance, Snow et al. (1986) conceptualized four distinct roles for researchers when writing about the intimate connection between fieldwork roles and the information yielded. Others focus on the balance between “involvement and detachment”; including how to avoid losing objectivity or “going native” (Adler et al., 1986:364). ² For instance, Adler and Adler (1987a) created a typology of the researcher or “membership” roles adopted by those conducting ethnographic studies, with an emphasis on how embedded in the field the researcher becomes. The least immersive role is that of the peripheral member, referring to the researcher who still has daily or near-daily contact and interaction in the field but remains more of an observer. The active member is more central in the setting than the peripheral, and engages in an observational as well as functional role, while the complete member is fully immersed in the field. What distinguishes the member role is the degree of the researcher’s social integration into the field (e.g., the level of participation in activities, group affiliation) and their required self-reflectivity and role awareness. Although different factors influence an ethnographer’s choice of role and how it is maintained during fieldwork, the conditions of the setting, characteristics of the researchers, and how both the setting and researcher change over the course of the ethnography shape the experience (Adler and Adler, 1987a; Adler and Adler, 1987b). The roles however cannot be mutually exclusive.

Ethnographers have also debated the “insider” versus “outside” distinction, particularly in discussions related to the development of trust with the researched (Bucerius, 2013, Crewe and Alice Levins, 2015; Wacquant, 2002). Jewkes (2012) following Merton (1972) and Phillips and Earle (2010), insightfully notes that “defining ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ status is complex as the categories can be fluid or asymmetrical, and rigid adherence to binary classifications of homogeneity within subject positions can lead to accusations of essentialism.” ³ Furthermore, regarding the prospect of going “native,” Wacquant (2002) argues that critical distance between the researcher and researched is of utmost importance given that the objective of an ethnography is always to “dissect the social mechanisms and meanings that govern their [social groups] practices, ground their morality (if such be the question), and explain their strategies and trajectories …” (p. 1470). Trust is intimately connected to the role an ethnographer assumes, ultimately informing the information they secure (Snow et al., 1986). Nevertheless, as per Van Maanen (1981) trust, at least in part, develops as ethnographers comply with the taken for granted expectation of daily living informing the social world. Chenault (2014) explains that in his experience working as a CO in four different prisons in the United States, he had to prove himself “twice” before being accepted into the officer culture. He notes “the need to prove oneself twice is critical because as Marquart says, ‘I had to earn their favor before being accepted, respected, and able to collect data’ (1986a, p. 15).”

Some ethnographers, including many anthropologists, argue that insider status is necessary to gain in-depth information and thus trusting relationships are necessary for achieving “privileged insider status” (Tope et al., 2005: 489). Others, like Bucerius (2013) demonstrated in her immersive ethnographic work, agree that

ethnographers do necessarily need to strive for insider status [to be fully integrated and immersed in the field] or to avoid an outsider role. [However,] … being an outsider is not a liability one must overcome, because achieving status as an outsider trusted with ‘insider knowledge’ may provide the ethnographer with a different perspective and different data than that potentially afforded by insider status (p. 691).

The insider status then is not a necessary component of fieldwork, as being an outsider protects from “going native.” Nevertheless, as per Nielsen (2010), being an informed and involved outsider does require “shifting social engagements” that includes making observations with confidentiality and building trust. ⁴ In this sense, I was a trusted outsider—often walking a fine line between appearing an insider and maintaining an outsider status—my role was “functional,” like the active member, but not passive. I engaged but was not completely immersed (i.e., the complete member) (Adler and Adler, 1987a; Adler and Adler, 1987b).

Current study methods

The current study objectives were, at minimum, threefold. First, to experience how COs were socialized into the CO role in training, second, to understand the context and experience of training, and, third, to understand the variation between the focus of the training and what is absorbed as a recruit (thus informing training in the future). The training program runs Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 3:30/4 p.m., daily, but requires participants to reside onsite. I adhered to the rules of CTP participation and the regulations and directives put forth by the training academy. These regulations governed everything from how I organized my room, dressed, and did my hair, to my comportment at and outside the academy. Recognizing that, as per Van Maanen (1988), ethnography entails some amount of “living with and living like those who are studied” (p. 2), I participated in the CTP (e.g., from fitness, to decision-based training scenarios, to exercises in de-escalation, to firearms training) but always maintained the lens of a researcher. My focus in the ethnographic study was to unpack the experience of becoming a CO for CSC but, most centrally, to use the grounded experience to ultimately help inform CSC policies and practices, including those around training and recruitment. The CTP experience combined the nuance of an organizational ethnography (e.g., providing insight into organizational culture, organizational learning, and identity formation; see Cook and Yanow, 1993; Humphreys and Brown, 2002; Kunda, 1992, Nicolini et al., 2003) with the insight of a social constructionist approach that recognizes realities are co-created and co-interpreted by all actors in any situation (Charmaz, 2006).

Viewing the ethnography as a shared venture with group participants eliminated any consideration of covert participation in the CTP. I was not comfortable hiding my researcher status. Moreover, my ethnographic role is already complex and was marked by role ambiguity when first entering the field even without deception (Snow et al., 1986) and, as per Jacobs (1974), I recognized that as a “known observer” I could never “truly belong.” Fieldwork roles emerge from processes of negotiation “between the researcher and the researched” (Adler et al., 1986:372), thus such role ambiguity was expected but still riddled with uncertainty and far from a comfortable experience.

I entered the CTP with information about the environment, training, and culture, aware that I had to be reflexive about my experiences and any preconceived interpretations. In any ethnographic study, there must be some mutual trust and respect, and being an outsider does not preclude the development of trust.

Completing an ethnographic study that includes a sort of evaluation of elements within a training program can leave an organization, particularly a correctional services organization that is already under much public scrutiny, quite vulnerable, and even more susceptible to outside scrutiny and criticism. With this in mind, I employed appreciative inquiry in that I approached criticalness within the context of the objectives of the academy and CSC, and with readiness to find positive ways to build on or make change (Hammond, 1998; Liebling, 1999; Liebling, 2001). As per Liebling et al. (1999: 76), the appreciative stance employed “can be a more creative and future-oriented process than the type of critical evaluation often carried out in prison [related research].”

My approach was to learn procedures, but also the reasoning behind the procedures—legally, professionally, practically—and material being taught and thus the actions of all the researched. Appreciative inquiry enabled me to work collaborative with everyone at the academy—trainers, staff, and recruits—and to maintain a positive lens in recognizing the merits and limitations of the training. I was able to draw attention to training gaps, such as the lack of training in cultural competencies or trauma informed perspectives, while still valuing the material covered in class. By not entering the training looking for deficiencies, I could appreciate the content and context. The approach helped to build trust and foster relationships that I do not believe would be otherwise possible with an approach less conducive to valuing the efforts already informing training processes. Here, I was able to navigate the tensions that often shape working in partnership with a correctional service by learning where CSC was coming from, appreciating their standpoint, but also informing of my own. Not approaching the training looking for problems, provided a space for me to hear others and to develop my own insights into the material taught. The practice, for example, showed me that the key challenge in training is often not that material is inadequate, but that the recruits do not fully comprehend the severity and reality underpinning much of the training.

I also took to heart Ferrell’s (1998) call to “reintroduce the humanity of the researcher into the research process and make a case for critical, reflective, autobiographical accounts and understandings—for ‘profound self-disclosures’ and openness to the ‘subjective experience of doing research’—as part of the field research process” (p. 24). I include throughout the article, as per Jewkes (2012), my role of a “researcher as a person” with emotions and how my own biography intruded at times on my experiences and at other times was productive such that I benefitted (p. 65, emphasis added).

I engaged with direct observation, collecting “observational data include the acts or behaviours that are engaged in individually or jointly, the characteristics of the actors and the relationships between them, the discernible ways in which the action is accomplished, and the social and spatial contexts in which actions occur” (Snow et al., 1986:391). Like Browne and McBride (2015), I spent a lot of time “hanging out” at the CTP, both to gain legitimacy and because there was idle time we, as a cohort, spent together, between and after classes, meals, etc. Such experiences assisted tremendously in building relationships (and trust) with recruits and becoming more familiar with the nuances of the academy. These informal opportunities to spend time together helped to dismantle barriers and increase acceptance among peers, as we all had opportunities to get to know one another. To be able to hang out, however, requires a flexible research design that values chance encounters (Browne and McBride, 2015). In my experience, the ethnography was never “over” and chance encounters were frequent. Moreover, either on site at the academy or in the community, there was a degree of mutual surveillance as we engaged in the 14-week job interview. Any community member, trainer or CSC affiliate could report a recruit’s behaviors, which can inform who succeeds or not in the CTP.

While participating in the CTP, I used field notes to record my daily experiences (e.g., observations and interactions) as well as what I refer to as training notes. I made training notes as I reviewed the hundreds of pages of training content. ⁵ In the current article, I focus on my field notes, my experience of immersive participation, and the ethical challenges I faced. I also consulted regularly with CSC employees in Learning and Development who oversee training at CSC. We often discussed pedagogy, and I used the opportunities to gather insight into the history of diverse training modules and processes as well as keeping informed about planned or actively underway developments in training.

I did have two exceptions that distinguished me from other recruits, the first, I was allowed to have my phone as long as it was concealed and, second, I could enter the trainer office space. Otherwise, I do not believe I received preferential treatment when in training. For instance, I did receive a strike (I failed a firearm qualification and had to do a remedial) and did not perform optimally in many activities. I had to keep my comportment and appearance in line with the organizational expectations (e.g., pressed uniform and hair in bun). Overall, like Sparks (2002) and Jewkes (2012: 69), I too found that “the interweaving of biography, experience, and fieldwork—and the potential for criticism for my actions and nonactions—proved paralyzing” at times, particularly when reflecting on the CTP experience and writing up my findings (including the current article).

Values and ethics: A lengthy job interview

From the moment I entered the field, I started a perpetual and consistent process of negotiating my position as a researcher versus that of the new recruit. As a researcher, I needed to stay cognizant of the objectives of the training and of the greater academy. Although seemingly simple, the multiple roles created many experiences of role conflict. For instance, as noted prior, recruits are not allowed into the offices of the trainers, and there is much speculation among recruits about what exactly occurs in the space. Unlike other recruits, I occasionally did enter the “forbidden” trainer office space in my researcher role. I entered, for instance, to engage with my trainers about content, experiences, and to confirm my scheduling. However, I was asked multiple times by recruits about the trainer space to which I never provided a direct response and I was even reprimanded by a trainer who I had not met about being in the trainer space unauthorized.

Castellano (2007: 704) writes “one of the most critical issues for ethnographers immersed in fieldwork is balancing the tension between the researcher and participant-observation roles.” Introducing myself on the very first day, as everyone went around the room stating a few details about themselves, I disclosed my researcher status. Despite recognizing that as an ethnographer I would at times be both the “researcher, and the researched” (Van Maanen, 1981: 471), to my knowledge, my presence was not overly significant to my fellow cohort, who were more interested in completing the CTP and focused on the tasks (and many tests). Nevertheless, although a long noted problem, a key struggle during the ethnographic experience is that the people involved in the ethnography, those with whom I interacted, did not provide ongoing consent to being part of my CTP experience and I would bear witness to the trials and tribulations of their performance at the CTP (as they bore witness to my own performance). For example, as I write up my ethnographic experience I struggle with how to report on consequential occurrences that, from my perspective, changed the atmosphere in my cohort and shape the experience. For instance, the first time a recruit in any cohort is sent home has some effect on everyone in the cohort because someone going home makes the possibility very real to all recruits; it confirms that not everyone will complete the CTP. The story of the first time a recruit goes home is personal and perhaps not something that a recruit wants documented. The words of Sparks (2002) resonated with my experience at the time: “I was there; and it would be too simple, and too consoling, to pretend that my being there was of no consequence at all” (p. 578). Thus, the tension between the researcher and observer roles were omnipresent and I had to navigate them, while being aware that, for any ethnographer, trust “grows or shrinks” over the course of the study (Matza, 1969). How I navigated these roles was always from the standout of a trusted outsider, but, at times, I would have appeared to others as an insider, struggling through the same materials and experiences as all my fellow recruits during training.

Moreover, most recruits were participants in a simultaneous longitudinal study, of which I am the primary investigator, and thus, we had signed agreements of confidentiality in place. The outcome was that I was an optional confidant for the collective, for trainers, recruits, or management. Rather than succumbing to role conflict, my strategy was to trust (albeit anxiously) in the processes in place at the training academy and, even more so, in the integrity of my fellow recruits. Moreover, my role was to gather information that would inform training processes of the future.

Correctional Service of Canada stresses the importance of alignment between the values and ethics of each recruit and the organization’s mandate and the job description of a CO. For instance, the academy places demands and expectations on recruits, expecting recruits to meet a minimum standard of behavior. But if a recruit’s behavior falls short of that standard—something that occurs with or without intention and can be significant or benign in effect—my role was to stay neutral (and out of any conflicts or possible drama as much as possible). Participating in the CTP, however, includes being part of and witnessing the full “job interview” of the other recruits, not just recruit behaviors between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. as presented to trainers. Values and ethics constitute modules of study within the training program. During the CTP, recruits were reminded about the fundamental importance of behaving ethically and developing virtues, even going so far as to inform recruits that “immoral decisions” can result in discomfort, concern, and stress (Correctional Service Canada, 2017). Correctional Service of Canada informs recruits: “without a doubt, the most important attributes of an individual applying for a job in law enforcement are the applicant’s integrity and moral behavior. In order to be a law enforcement officer, individuals must demonstrate a life lived morally” (Correctional Service Canada, 2017: 3). The CSC trains recruits by discussing values and ethics in relation, for instance, to the application of on duty discretion, solidarity among staff, and sources of corruption (e.g., “failing to report wrong doings”; “accessing or sharing protected information” (Correctional Service Canada, 2017: 8). In training, CSC emphasizes both the “values and ethics code for the public sector” as established by the Treasury Board of Canada ⁶ and CSC’s mission and values statement. ⁷ Specifically, the values for CSC are Respect, Fairness, Professionalism, Inclusiveness, Accountability, and Critical Thinking and their organizational statement of commitment reads:

…We use shared, reciprocal values to guide our behaviour, decision-making, and discretionary judgment. These shared values are useful in day-to-day work within CSC and with all partners and stakeholders. In living these values, we demonstrate our commitment to personal and professional integrity and to working together to shape an organizational culture aligned with these same values.

…We believe in the human capacity for positive change and recognize that relationships are at the core of our work. Through our relationships, we contribute in diverse and significant ways to Changing Lives and Protecting Canadians (Correctional Service Canada, 2017: 13).

The challenge is, as reasonably expected, that it is unlikely that every recruit across all the CTP sites will meet the ethical and value-based standard of the CSC consistently during the CTP. Despite being taught critical thinking strategies and performing exercises on how best to respond to diverse ethical considerations (among others), the recruits (including myself) still lived having to demonstrate our moral positioning repeatedly. To assist with our own reflectivity as recruits, CSC also introduced a process through which recruits were to continuously reflect on our own ethical behaviors—and how, as recruits, we present our personal values and morals through our actions.

Part of the processes of reflectivity involved recruits discussing their actions with the trainers, and the trainers providing their insight into how they interpreted a recruit’s actions. The process provided external insight in our actions as recruits and both recognized and centralized the relational element of the CO role. Being a CO is about relationships with colleagues, prisoners, management, and the public. CSC’s emphasis on values and ethics is extensive and comprehensive, and, as I observed, practiced, and applied—it is not just words. Over the course of my CTP experience, within my cohort, CSC released more than one individual from the Academy based on interpretations of their personal fit with the values and ethics of the organization. The releasing of recruits based on ethics and values is not a rarity at the academies; the practice confirms that processes are in place to assess the integrity of potential hires at CSC. Nevertheless, as an ethnographer, the practice creates an uncomfortable space that requires navigation and ongoing reflection. I found watching recruits, often so close to achieving their career goals, be sent home difficult emotionally, personally, and professionally at times.

I was tense on my first day of fieldwork. My trainers had already met me, ⁸ but I remained unsure if they were given a choice about my participation in their classes. Even now, as I write up the results, I find myself reaching out to specific recruits to confirm their consent regarding the experiences I recall and am recounting. I navigated my position as a researcher and a recruit with conflicting authority (e.g., lots versus none) and commitments (e.g., to each recruit, to the organization, to the research) always while managing the power dynamics between trainer and trainee and the fact that each trainee was being constantly evaluated and assessed. At times, I felt empowered in my researcher position and at other times powerless as a researcher and as a recruit.

The emotional dimensions of my in-depth fieldwork were periodically quite heavy, even “paralyzing.” Emotions in fieldwork inform the qualitative (and quantitative) data collected (Bondi, 2005) and also constitute data (Game, 1997, Hubbard et al., 2001), specifically “a layer of tacit data that researchers need to find a way to consciously sense, collect and analyse” (Drake and Harvey, 2014: 490). Ethnographies can produce some rather strong emotions, including those tied to vivid memories, and requires emotional investment (Drake and Harvey, 2014). As someone who cares about the safety and well-being of incarcerated individuals and COs, I was emotionally invested because the attitudes of recruits represent the attitudes of future officers who will enter the institutions and be responsible for the care, custody, and control of prisoners. The value, ethics, and processes of self-reflection, however, show CSC has, and continues to advance and improve, processes in place that help to reduce the possibility for an unprofessional recruit (e.g., who would torment prisoners or colleagues, or cross lines that should not be crossed) to make it through CTP. Nonetheless, as a recruit I witnessed the realities of human behaviors, and at times the tension between what was witnessed versus my own positionality generated intensive emotions. I also had to manage the tensions around how my participation would affect those around me; not that I am arrogant enough to think I could impact one’s life course, but, for instance, I was careful to avoid distracting from the efforts of a recruit (i.e., they were trying always to present their best, see Goffman, 1968). I also decided early to keep my views to myself, particularly during disagreements, to ensure I did not inform collective decision making among my cohort. I avoided and tried to never weigh in during conflicts (conflicts could be between CTP cohorts, between recruits, between trainers and recruits or between trainers); however, as is life, I cannot speak to how recruits, trainers, and staff, despite my best intentions, interpreted me from any perspective but ultimately my own.

Navigating relationships

In the social sciences, as a qualitative researcher who conducts interview, focus group, participant observation, and ethnographic studies, research interactions can be personal for the participant (and sometimes for the researcher). Often participants disclose their personal thoughts and experiences around a topic—thus, there is a clear one-sided disclosure of what can include rather intimate or private information that the participant would not normally (or even ever) share, yet often without any comparable disclosure or visible judgment about the information shared from the researcher. Research relationships can develop quickly for participants as they can speak freely and as experiences are shared in an ethnography, but the relationship is not reflective of traditional relationships (i.e., trust is not built and learned over time); instead relationships are bound in confidentiality agreements and informed consent (Ricciardelli and Haynes, 2020). ⁹ Moreover, in doing research within a hierarchical prison structure, I recognized very quickly that my relationships simply did not align with the organizational structure and its inherent relationships of power and position, which I then had to navigate. For instance, recruits (who are not researchers) did not typically have a direct line of contact with the Academy director, nor would it be appropriate for a recruit to contact the Academy director without progressing through a chain of command. As a researcher with a longitudinal study underway, I already was connected directly with the Academy director and could bypass any chain of command.

My previous working relationships with CSC, as well as the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers (UCCO-SACC-CSN), may have positioned me as “different” from some other recruits. Some recruits too had existing relationships, for example, some recruit’s family members were COs or high ranking institutional correctional employees and a few individuals in my cohort had prior CSC work experience. The fact that I had working relationships across organizations, I hoped, helped me demonstrate I thus not “on the side” of any one organization or person or position, and that I was hoping to do some good through my research. I think more than the insider/outsider tension, I had to navigate tensions around how I was positioned and had to prove I was there with everyone’s best interest at heart.

I, like Chenault (2014), had to prove I was not a threat to the trainers, staff, or the recruits. I however was not working as a CO, thus proving I could do the job was less critical. Moreover, sharing in the CTP experiences and being regularly present assisted in mutual trust developing as well as relationships and connections. My actions will always earn me or cost me trust. I entered the academy with an existing network at CSC and ongoing relationships. I knew my trainers but I also had relationships that spanned the hierarchical structure of the organization due to my research. For instance, I would occasionally leave the classroom to take a meeting with another, perhaps higher ranking, CSC employee (but I also picked up hundreds of shell casings at the end of range days in 40+°C weather). Thus, while my recruit role was most prominent during my training at the academy—one without authority or position and bound to confidentiality—my researcher role was never abandoned. I remained aware of the Hawthrone effect, referring to the possibility of participants changing their behavior in the presence of a researcher (Roethlisberger et al., 2003), as I stayed an outsider to the best of my ability as neither role I held canceled the other. What surprised me, and was also experienced by a researcher participating in recruit training (Klassen, 2018), is how quickly my situational master status and thus central role was that of a recruit in training (e.g., I was reprimanded multiple times as a recruit, once was for being out of uniform after being pepper sprayed). ¹⁰

Recruits and relationships

The academy generally has three cohorts in residence; the groups range to a maximum of 30/32 recruits. My cohort was smaller, with only 25 people including me. I was placed such that, I believe, given the low number of recruits in the cohort, I would not be distracting attention from other recruits during my training. I had worried I would need a fair amount of guidance and directed instruction (e.g., I had never used a firearm when the ethnographic study was conceptualized) as I did the training. Unlike the other recruits, I never experienced or “passed” the recruitment and application processes. I did not feel I possessed the necessary qualities to succeed as a CO and still believe that to be true. I am also not convinced I would not have “struck out” during the CTP if I completed all the strike-able tests. Unlike all the recruits, I was not embarking on a new (or my first) career. I was older than most of the individuals in my cohort but not alone in my age. The recruits in my cohort ranged in age from those who had more recently finished high school to persons embarking on a new career in their late forties. In the dorms, we did not just live with persons from our CTP cohort, there was often at least one other cohort from CTP living in the dorms—thus another 30ish strangers ranging in age who spoke either French or English or both.

My nerves were on edge about meeting the recruits within my CTP cohort but also about how I would manage the outsider dynamic tied to my status and position as a researcher who would not go on to be a CO. I knew from interviewing officers that the CTP, also referred to as CORE, could be the basis of lasting friendships, and even if not, there was a connection between people that emerged from “surviving” the CTP together. In the CTP, a cohort marches to the academy as early as 6 a.m. together, eats up to three meals together—definitely breakfast and lunch but also dinner most days. Thus, cohorts all shared in their observations about the quality of the diverse meals offered and likes (e.g., personally, the introduction of bagels on the breakfast menu) versus dislikes (e.g., the frequency of the fish). Cohorts learn together all day, march back to the dorms together at the end of class, and train and study together in the evenings (e.g., many tests require a partner to perform), and the day started anew each morning. The living arrangement meant cohorts shared the bathrooms, hallways, showers, and communal seating areas and a kitchenette. Often, I found myself alongside other recruits, chatting over laundry, morning coffee, or boot shining. Cohorts snacked at night together sometimes, and literally spent more time in each other’s company than most adults could ever imagine—and no group of 25 people will ever get along well enough to spend that much time together (i.e., the starting point of many reality T.V. shows). The reality, however, of such a situation is that everyone needed someone with whom they could share the experience—including lamenting the hardships and celebrating the achievements.

One of my concerns heading to the academy was about how to not disrupt the natural flow of relationships that would be built, nor interfere in the bonds that develop between individuals. I did not want to interfere with the supports recruits could perhaps provide each other over the course of their career. However, despite my situational master status as a recruit, I positioned myself as an outsider at the academy. With these concerns in mind, and in light of logistical realities, I decided I would not complete the 14 weeks consecutively. I instead would make up missed time in other CTP cohorts, where I could learn about diverse trainers’ teaching styles, and see diverse cohort dynamics. Moreover, I intended to also complete the PWs training—the training for recruits who will work exclusively in adult women’s prisons—which requires participation in a different CTP cohort. My cohort were all recruits training to be CXs which means the recruits would be working in institutions that housed adult men. I had completed 10 of the 14 weeks with my CTP.

In those moments where I became so deeply embedded in the stresses and emotions of the CTP, like after earning my first strike, I would take a step back for perspective and sometimes remove myself—maintaining my distance and researcher objectivity. Although I was not positioning myself for a job as a CX, completing the CTP required commitment and sacrifice. I tried to ensure that I was not a person’s “only person” or confidant. I realize I had my persons too at CTP who I depended on and took comfort in connecting with as I managed the stresses of being away from home. Yet, I could never discuss my experiences at the academy given the confidentiality I owed each person. Thus, I tired, but likely without the success for which I had hoped, to do my best by each person I encountered and not interfere with the CTP experience of any recruits. At the end of the day, although ideally each person should be unaffected by my participation in the CTP, I cannot guarantee that. I was there on the first day of class and at graduation.

Discussion

The role a researcher takes on is associated with their degree of immersion in the field and the information they will have access to. Both will produce opportunities for role conflict (Brannick and Coghlan, 2007) and role confusion (Asselin, 2003). Particularly at the onset of any ethnographic study, role ambiguity is possible, which I experienced as I learned my role expectations and my situational master status (e.g., what it means to be a recruit at the academy). In my case, I was balancing the researcher and recruit roles—that of a recruit would become my situational master status. Like in prison research, where the issue of researcher roles often arises (e.g., Giallombardo, 1966; Liebling, 1999, Sparks et al., 1996), particularly in regard to the low trust environment (Liebling and Arnold, 2004) and how researchers feel they are perceived by the researched (King, 2000; Sparks et al., 1996), the same could be said at the academy. I renegotiated my role in the field, my positioning, regularly (Jacobs, 1974). I developed mutual trust, which only strengthens over the course of my presence at the CTP; I was trained alongside other recruits to be skeptical and to incorporate a “correctional lens.” The shared experiences assisted as I was socially integrated into the field but not a complete member, where I participated in all training activities—and lived at the academy—but my affiliation intentionally stayed closer to the status of “outsider” in comparison to that of an “insider” (Adler and Adler, 1987a; Adler and Adler, 1987b). I never went “native,” which only strengthen trust—I never pretended to be someone or something that I was not and I always recognized my place at the academy. For these reasons, although always present, the researcher gaze was not pronounced, my gaze was secondary and my role as a recruit—engaged with other recruits trying to make it through the material—was central.

The outsider status was necessary for perspective. I was “in the academy” as an outsider. Too easily could I have become engulfed in the world that was the training academy, a phenomenon that should be unpacked in future research. Is the emergent social world in part a result of the closed and confidential nature of the training, or the fact that all recruits at the academy are striving for a shared goal—to be a CO? Although doing the CTP earned me some respect from the recruits, trainers, and others at CSC, it was my times of respite from the study (included to help me maintain perspective) that revealed, on my re-entry into the field, how dynamics changed within the cohort and the constant role negotiation all recruits endured during the CTP. I too was consistently renegotiating my position, who I connected with and my actions, while attending to my duties as a recruit. My outsider status limited my investment in the ever-changing social dynamics within and across the cohorts and created the critical distance necessary (see Wacquant, 2002) to hold a keen focus on the training and organizational socialization. Staying largely a trusted outsider (Bucerius, 2013), in my experience, was ethically necessary to manage the dilemmas of consent, relationships, and status or power. Burdett et al. (2018), explain that challenges with field research include the consequences of participation for data collection, and the legal, ethical, or moral issues resulting from the use of participation as a research strategy.

All researchers, despite best intentions, approach their studies and scholarship from different theoretical and empirical positions with unique perspectives and both intellectual and applied processes. As such, I cannot say with any degree of confidence that my presence did not have any effect on the experiences of my fellow recruits, but I can say that I did try to minimize impacts. Emotionally, at least in part for this reason, the fieldwork has marked me. My emotions, particularly around the values and ethics of recruits and the processes in place to verify recruit compatibility with the mandates of CSC, underpin quite vivid memories (e.g., of recruits sent home, of the struggles of recruits as they too managed the diverse personalities of other recruits, of my own earned strike). Moreover, through the CTP perceptions of prisoners formed, and COs were socialized, both topics to be unpacked in future research given, as per Liebling (2011) and Liebling et al. (2010), the attitudes of COs in turn shape the prison life experience of those in their custody.

I made active choices about my participation in the CTP, emotionally, and the tension remains around if processes actually had any impact on the moral dilemmas informing my ethnographic study or if my processes were simply to appease my own concerns. Future researchers, I suggest, may continue to unpack the ethical, moral, and methodological challenges lacing ethnographic studies conducted in agencies of criminal justice, specifically at training academies. Researchers have long argued that ethnographic studies tied to correctional services are too few, marginalized by a strong quantitative focus, and thus create a lacuna in prison research (Jewkes, 2012; Rhodes, 2009; Wacquant, 2002; Watson, 2015).

I was unable to complete 14 consecutive weeks of the CTP, which has both pros (e.g., opportunities of respite from the field and for reflection that maintained my outsider status) and cons (e.g., I missed certain experiences and did not complete the CTP in a manner consistent with all other recruits). For future research, the 14 weeks should be completely consecutively to compare the training experience—would it be possible to focus on the CTP for 14 weeks without interpersonal conflict if the weeks were completely consecutively and in full? Are opportunities for reflection possible? How much more emotionally taxing would the experience become?

Finally, given the current project developed in partnership with CSC, was mutually of interest, and actualized rather immediately (within months of funding being received I was doing the CTP), I suggest future Canadian researchers examine systematically the diverse experiences of researchers navigating access with diverse correctional services organizations. Such information is necessary to inform researchers (including trainees and graduate students) about the nuances of gaining access to the field, processes that assist in creating partnered or collaborative research approaches, and to increase the appetite for evidence-based collaborative research that is beneficial for all parties.

Conclusion

Overall, reflecting on my actions throughout the CTP reveals an ongoing and processual consideration of the ethics of, and the associated emotions of, doing ethnographic research within any agency of correctional services. The advantages of such work cannot be understated however, as through ethnographic studies the nuanced production of knowledge can be unpacked, providing necessary insights into institutional processes, cultures, and how the social worlds (e.g., the prison, the training academy) are experienced (Rhodes, 2009; Ugelvik, 2014). For instance, my “strike” ultimately served to strengthen my understanding and appreciation of the training program and the many evolving stressors inherent to the experience. Within my situational master status of recruit—the status contextually at the forefront when in training—I embodied the experiences of shame, guilt, concern, alongside comradery, friendship, learning, and even acquired competencies and insight. I also experienced and witnessed the drive and dedication required to become a CO. The embodied experience, going through the process with the researched rather than conducting a series of interviews on site at the academy, provided a space for reflection and an opportunity to impact policies and practices with applied, grounded recommendations that reflect the nuance of the greater and more complex CTP experience.