NCJ Number
89012
Journal
Journal of Offender Counseling Services and Rehabilitation Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Dated: (Fall 1982) Pages: 23-31
Date Published
1982
Length
9 pages
Annotation
Changes in prison organizational policy that facilitate guards perceiving themselves as influential role models for inmates as well as peacekeepers in maintaining institutional control would greatly reduce the role conflict officers currently experience.
Abstract
Despite recent sentencing legislation in many States that emphasizes incapacitation rather than rehabilitation as the goal of prisons, all prisons still continue to provide treatment services. Authority to conduct custodial and rehabilitative functions is posited in personnel high in the organizational hierarchy. The incompatibility of the two goals and the lack of precise methods of achieving them leads to a diversity of interests within the staff structure. Power is shared by two or more groups with differing goals, and no one group is able to control the other completely. This role conflict among high-level personnel affects the correctional officer's ability to resolve role conflict. A direct result of the duality of the guard's role is difficulty in determining criteria for dealing with the deviant behavior of inmates. There are two strategies of reducing the rehabilitation and control role ambiguity. One approach is the adoption of a single function in performing duties. Another approach is to develop a role model that encompasses both custodial and rehabilitative functions and equally rewards the effective performance of each type of responsibility. The latter approach is the most constructive. This implies that it is possible for guards to so interact with inmates that they provide a role model and a relational stimulus for attitude and behavioral change in inmates as well as a social control authority. Twenty-five references are provided.