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ABSTRACT
The relationship between correctional officers (COs) and prisoners is dynamic and bounded by a unique context. COs engage in numerous sanctioned and unsanctioned behaviors within their correctional institution. The latter actions are typically referred to as deviant behavior. COs’ deviance can have a debilitating effect not only on other officers, correctional workers, the administration, but also inmates and the institution as a whole. This article specifies a model of the interaction between COs’ deviance and inmate reactions to these kinds of behaviors. In general, the study argues that convicts can respond in four different, but interrelated ways: obedience or deference to authority, apathy, adaptation, and resistance. Acts of prisoners resisting can further lead to COs’ deviant behaviors to continue within the correctional institution.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Dawn L. Rothe for her comments on a previous version of this article.
Notes
1. Despite subtle differences in meaning, we use the terms inmates, convicts and prisoners interchangeably.
2. Although this analysis is mainly tailored toward prisons and correctional officers who work in them, many of the actions that are identified occur in jail settings too.
3. Research on prison administrators and probation and parole officers is relevant, however this review is restricted to the work that explicitly focuses on COs.
4. Thus, this review ignores prisoner and prison activist initiated solutions. For a review of prisoner resistance, see (Buntman, Citation1998; Ross, Citation2010).
5. This definition subsumes CO misconduct.
6. Portions of this section were derived from Ross (Citation2010).
7. Although this review is mainly geared to male institutions, most of the conditions, adaptations, resistance, and state response equally apply to both male and female correctional facilities.