Dial examines correctional officer stress and job satisfaction.

Correctional officers and managers have one of the most stressful jobs anywhere, often leading to high turnover and rates of illness. This doesn't have to be true. The author outlines what stress really is, and teaches strategies to deal with negative stress though such techniques as time management, relaxation, diet and exercise. The book provides guidance for dealing with the negative stress associated with the job.

This book provides a much-needed sociological account of the social world of the English prison officer, making an original contribution to our understanding of the inner life of prisons in general and the working lives of prison officers in particular. As well as revealing how the job of the prison officer - and of the prison itself - is accomplished on a day-to-day basis, the book explores not only what prison officers do but also how they feel about their work. In focusing on how prison officers feel about their work this book makes a number of interesting revelations - about the essentially domestic nature of much of the work they do, about the degree of emotional labour invested in it and about the performance nature of many of the day-to-day interactions between officers and prisoners. Finally, the book follows the prison officer home after work, showing how the prison can spill over into their home lives and family relationships. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in different types of prisons (including interviews with prison officers' wives and children as well as prison officers themselves), this book will be essential reading for all those with an interest in how prisons and organisations more generally operate in practice.

Also Serving Time informs readers about the realities of provincial and territorial prison work in Canada. Exploring the nuances of the job, Rosemary Ricciardelli shows how officer orientations and attitudes toward prisoners are interconnected and foundational in shaping their own experiences as well as those of managerial and administrative staff and prisoners themselves. Drawing on interviews with one hundred correctional officers with experience in a range of provincial and territorial prisons, Ricciardelli provides theoretical and applied explorations of officer orientations, interpretations, and risk propensity to show how perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs – both at the individual and structural levels – shape prison practices. Detailing officers' experiences working with male and female adult prison populations, Also Serving Time unpacks how gender informs the actions and self-presentation of correctional officers. Ricciardelli confirms that tasks of daily living underpinned by pervasive risk potential shape prison work. Through the officer accounts presented, the book provides an opportunity for readers to explore how punishment and "rehabilitation," gender, and the hierarchical structure of prison management together shape officers’ daily realities.

This is a thoroughly updated edition of The Prison Officer (2001). The aim of this book is to provide an accessible and interesting guide to the world and work of the Prison Officer, showing the centrality of staff-prisoner relationships to every operation carried out by officers. So little has been written on prison officers (in comparison to prisoners) and this book addresses the gap. This book will be of relevance to anyone with an interest in the work of a prison officer, and essential reading for any established and aspiring officers.

An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018 * One of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2018 * Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize * Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism * Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award * A New York Times Notable Book A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history. In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still. The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison's sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone. A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.