Richie Roche
Deprivation of liberty is an indisputably weighty sanction and the ‘pains of imprisonment’ have been well documented. Goffman’s (Goffman, E., 1961. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Oxford: Doubleday) depiction of a total institution illustrates some of the difficulties prisoners face, such as being isolated from the rest of society, losing their autonomy and being restricted from sustaining relationships with family and friends. In this respect, prisons are essentially emotional places for both staff and prisoners; perhaps the most compelling reason is that the primary function of the prison is to deprive large numbers of people of their liberty. Unlike police officers, prison staff often spend long periods of time with the same prisoners, many of whom have suffered addictions, obstacles and personal traumas during the course of their sentences. Consequently, staff-prisoner relationships are emotionally charged due to the degree of intimacy involved in working with prisoners. In this respect, prison work can be very challenging and the emotions generated by working in a prison are many and wide-ranging.
Within Irish prisons, prison officers commonly present themselves as authoritative, self-assured and emotionally detached. This totemic presentation infers that they engage in a number of emotion-work strategies in order to control the impressions they convey of themselves, both to their colleagues and to the prisoners in their care. This is perhaps understandable, as within the relatively small confines of Irish prisons almost all daily tasks undertaken by prison officers are witnessed by the entire prison community. The impact of the inexorable prison wide focus on an officer’s working image is compounded by their occupational requirement for a common approach and the preservation of prison staff solidarity. Pressured by the need to conform, when Irish prison officers do display emotion, they are cognisant of the prison’s emotion display rules and only do so in areas and situations that are considered appropriate. By adapting to the norms of their occupational group over time, Irish prison staff develop strategies to manage their emotions. In this regard, the majority of officers manage their felt emotions by deploying coping stratagems such as the use of humour, suppression of their felt emotions, depersonalisation and detachment.
Prison officer culture also transfers to prison officers’ interactions outside their work as the emotions that working in a prison generates are difficult to leave at the prison gate. Four key dimensions of their work, namely danger, routinisation, desensitisation and contamination lead to high levels of role engulfment and minimises their ability to come out of role when not in work. The majority of participants in my study stated that they have been ‘changed’ by their work. Most officers indicated that their levels of suspicion, mistrust, cynicism and inurement for example, have increased as a result of the work they do. Interestingly, the majority of officers I interviewed view the changes that have occurred to them as a distinct advantage, that is, changes to be celebrated rather than regretted. Whilst the majority of officers expressed that their partners, spouses, friends or children frequently viewed their role engulfment as a negative phenomenon, they portrayed a set of skills they have developed and refined over a number of years. Notwithstanding their positive views, my study illustrates that many Irish prison officers are deeply impacted by their job.
Utilising the concept of emotional labour as an investigative lens to view and understand their world has furthered my understanding of the sociological realm of Irish prison officers. The men and women who work in Irish prisons have my deepest respect.
Richie Roche, Assistant Governor, Limerick Prison; Ph.D. Candidate, Centre for Crime Justice and Victim Studies, School of Law, UL
Criminal Justice in Ireland 