CC CH 9 The corrections experience for staff

what are officers called today

no longer referred to as guards

now referred to as correctional officers (more primitive role)

view of corrections work

general public does not see corrections work as a profession

most college students don not identify work in jails or prisons as their career goal

many jobs aren’t structured like a profession

profession

regarding the positions of corrections officers and staff, a profession is ditinugished by prior educational attainment

• college, formal training on the job, pay and benefits that are proportiante with the work, ability to exercise discretion, guided by a code of ethics

• most corrections jobs fail to meet the first three criteria for professional status

• no specific code of eithics like doctors and lawyers

growth in corrections

amount of corrections workers have grown a lot in the last 24 years along w the offender population (may still be undereducated, untrained or underpaid for their work)

1982-2007- amost 600% increase in direct expenditures for all CJ agencies (660% increase in expenditures just for corrections)

• doubled from 300,000 to 765,466 with majority being correctial officers working in state and local facilities and programs

ratios of corrections workers

2005- majority of those who worked directly with inmates as correctional staff were males by a 3-1 ratio

• gender differences largest in federal facilities (87% correctional officers male 14% female)

• gender differences snammest in private facilities (52% male and 48% female)

gender differences by level and type of facility

closley align with pay differences

• in prisons, federal correctional officers much more likely to be male (best paid)

• private facility correctional officers who are almost as likely to be female (paid the least)

staff to inmate ratio

although there is growth in staff, the inmate population still outweighs it

federal 10.3-1

private prisons 6.9-1

state prisons 4.9-1

jails continue to hold 82% of their capacity and the case load of a PO at the state level is around 38 cases per officer

main idea: staff working in corrections are stretched very thin despite the growth in their numbers

pay

compensation that is equivalent with job requirements and skills is a clear indication of the value given to a particular profession

• difficult to evaluate in corrections due to varying levels of experience, facility type, and the associated risks of the job

• has been progress

• police officers at both the state and local levels are paid about $19,000 more per year than correctional officers and $11,000 more than P&P officers in any state

both local and state police and P&P officers are more likely to require at least some college degree

push to privatize

has been a push to privatize correctional and law enforcement work since the 1980s

• has not resulted in better pay for staff

• privately employed corrections in law enforcerment officer median pay is at leas $21,000 less for the former and $13,000 less for the latter than for comparable jobs in the public sector

• if better pay is correlated with a more professional workfoce, then we can conclude that privatization efforts are not moving us in that direction

why we need more education and training

stanford prison experiment and abu Ghraib

correctional work and the subcultures that develop as part of the job can foster corrupt behavior by officers

powerful argument for the value of formal education or training in corrections work

some people will not act professionally or even decently especially when they have no education or training in that profession

stanford prison experiment

a psychological study conducted in 1971 by Philip Zimbardo that examined the effects of perceived power and authority in a simulated prison environment, ultimately revealing how situational forces can lead individuals to engage in abusive behaviors

Abu Ghraib

a prison in Iraq where human rights abuses by U.S. military personnel occurred during the Iraq War, highlighting the dangers of unchecked authority and inadequate training

engaged in harsh and inhumane practices

power

the ability to get people to do ehat they otheriwise wouldn't do

(Dahl 1961)

education and training

corrections work does not resemble other professions because the formal training provided for many new hires (number of hours required and the quality of training does not approach the level of other professions

corrections compendium survey 2003- researchers found that 31 of the reporting U.S. agencies required at least 200 hours of preservice training for those planning to work in correctional institutions

other survey- 150 directors and staff trainers, with responses from 13 states/agencies in April 2004, the juvenile justice trainers association found that 140-180 hours of preservice, academy like training are required for most new hires in juvenile facilities

people with a CJ degree generally don’t get corrections info (mainily other social sciences classes)

correctional work little understood

students and the general public may not view correctional work as a desirable carre choice because they do not understand it

truth: few people know how institutions and community supervision actually works

• movies and media impact views of corrections facilities and the work (dark corrupt abusive cynical)

• most professional places (CC) are barely depicted in the media

• academics have tended to focus much more attention on only the biggest and baddest of correctional institutions and the labor of the staff

• max security jails are often on showcase, even though they aren’t the majority of reality

• tend to focus on the negative/what staff is doing wrong

• receives short shrift by academics who tend to be preoccupied by what people want to see

• the work is underappreciated, little understood, and hampered by misguided perceptions

bureaucracy

A type of organizational structure that includes three elements: hierarchy, specialization, and rule of law

• most used in corrections

• created to increase the efficiency of workers and the uniformity of their work

Hierarchy

the pyramidal shape of the organization with the leader at the top and an expanding number of people below him them at each level of the organization

•   most formal power of the bureaucratic organization resides at the uppermost portions of the bureaucracy and travel down to the lower-level administrators and then the workers

• They report to and are accountable to supervisors, who report to other supervisors, who in turn report to managers, all the way up to the director of corrections in the state who is usually a political appointee of the governor

specialization

when the sectors of the pyramid below the leaders are segmented to concentrate on of the work, particularly as that work becomes more complicated and requires specific skills and abilities

• cc officers working with adults in larger bureaucratic orgs specialize in work with either P or Ps, with more serious offenders or first-time felons

rule of law element

the formal rules, procedures, and laws that govern agency operations

• formal and usually prescribe how the organization works and how the employees should react when faced with given circumstances

• Corrections work is governed by both legal requirements and court decrees as well as rules and procedures created by their organization

closed institutions

Institutions separated from their outside environments and unaffected by those environments, to some extent

the extent to which the organization is opened or closed affects the work of employees (corrections partially closed institutions

If open: employees are free to discuss their work with members of the outside world and are free to gather information, research, and assistance that might improve their work

If closed: employees can less likely seek out these materials and resources from the outside world