Doing Prison Work: the Public and Private Lives of Prison Officers PDF
Preview Doing Prison Work: the Public and Private Lives of Prison Officers
Doing Prison W ork Doing Prison Work The public and private lives of prison officers Elaine Crawley WILLAN PUBLISHING Published by Willan Publishing Culmcott House Mill Street, Uffculme Cullompton, Devon EX15 3AT, UK Tel: +44(0)1884 840337 Fax: +44(0)1884 840251 e-mail: [email protected] website: www.willanpublishing.co.uk Published simultaneously in the USA and Canada by Willan Publishing c/o ISBS, 920 NE 58th Ave, Suite 300, Portland, Oregon 97213-3786, USA Tel: +001(0)503 287 3093 Fax: +001(0)503 280 8832 e-mail: [email protected] website: www.isbs.com © Elaine Crawley 2004 The rights of Elaine M. Crawley to be identified as the author of this book have been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publishers or a licence permitting copying in the UK issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE. First published 2004 ISBN 1-84392-035-2 Hardback British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by GCS, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire Project managed by Deer Park Productions, Tavistock, Devon Printed and bound by T.J. International Ltd, Trecerus Industrial Estate, Padstow, Cornwall Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction xi 1 Setting the scene: the research in context 1 A century of staff discontent 2 Continuity and change 4 Power in prisons 19 Cultures at work 29 Emotion and performance 44 2 Research methods 57 The prisons 58 The fieldwork 61 3 Learning the rules, managing feelings: becoming a prison officer 65 Joining the prison service 65 Ten weeks at college: officers' experiences of basic training 68 Culture shock 75 Concluding comments: becoming and being 92 4 Them and us? How officers see prisoners 94 What do prison officers do? 95 How do prison officers perceive prisoners? 96 Getting the staff-prisoner relationship 'right' 105 Power in prisons: negotiation and coercion 109 Doing Prison Work 5 Emotion and performance: the presentation of self in prisons 128 The domestic character of prisons 128 The prison as an emotional arena 130 Managing emotion: anxiety, sympathy and fear 138 Emotion mis-management: the intrusive script 150 6 When things go wrong: suicide and conflict 155 Suicides in prison 155 Prisoner dissent 158 Riots as repair work 164 Concluding comments 166 7 How prison officers see their work, themselves and each other 168 How prison officers see their work 169 Neglected, unvalued, desensitised: how officers see themselves 180 How prison officers see each other 185 Speaking metaphorically: how officers see the prison 198 Negotiation and conflict: three specialist regimes 200 Discussion 221 8 Bringing it all back home? Stories of husbands and wives 226 Prison 'spill-over' 227 Concluding comments: moving between two worlds 249 9 Conclusions: doing prison work 250 Appendix 254 References 257 Index 273 vi In memory of my father, Captain Sidney Leonard 1919-2000 Acknowledgements This book is based upon PhD research I carried out between 1997 and 2000. A large number of people helped me to produce my PhD thesis, and there is insufficient space here to name everyone who gave me their support as I tried to turn my tentative ideas about prison work into a thesis and now into this book. 1 hope that the people I do not specifically mention will take it as read that their kind assistance is very gratefully acknowledged. I would like, first of all, to thank Richard Sparks for recognising the value of the project from the outset, and for supervising my PhD thesis with discernment and good humour. Thanks are also due to Alison Liebling and to Evi Girling who examined the thesis and provided me with invaluable comments and advice. I also wish to express my deep gratitude to the prison governors who allowed me into their prisons. Without their kind co-operation and assistance the fieldwork on which this book is based (and hence this book) would not have been possible. Special thanks are, of course, due to all the prison officers who took the time to talk to me, put up with me hanging around their workplaces for almost two years, made me endless cups of coffee and trusted me with their stories. 1 am also very grateful to each of the kind and hospitable women who invited me into their homes to share with me some of the ups and downs of being a prison officer's wife, and who were generous enough to provide me with food, drink and, on occasion, a bed for the night. My thanks are also due to the Economic and Social Research Council for their financial support for the project, and to Brian Willan for showing faith in the book and for his kind support and patience during
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