NCJ Number
85842
Date Published
1981
Length
21 pages
Annotation
Interviews were held in 1976 with a randomly selected sample of 50 corrections officers at a maximum security prison in a populous eastern State to identify sources of occupational stress for corrections officers and examines their techniques for coping with such stress.
Abstract
Data identified three general sources of occupational stress: inmates, powerlessness, and communication. Inmate-related sources of stress stemmed from a belief in the possibility of physical danger, the way inmates treat officers, and the difficulty of maintaining impartiality in dealings with inmates. Some officers cope with this source of stress by fatalistically admitting that their lives are in the hands of the inmates, developing inmate informants, and trying to treat inmates fairly in the hope they will then not be targeted for violence. Occupational stress is also related to officers' perceived powerlessness in influencing their work environment. One coping mechanism is urging inmates to file grievances related to the officers' working environment. Officers also perceive stress to be created by inadequate communication between the departmental and institutional administrations and the corrections officers. Officers cope by relying upon the inmate information network to find out what is happening in the prison. The coping mechanisms used by officers are often dysfunctional both for themselves and the institution. Prisons could do much to relieve officer stress through inservice training directed at problems that generally cause stress by collaborating with officers in management decisionmaking. Seven notes are listed.