Is the Prison System Failing Its Staff?

When people think about the harms of prison, they almost always think about incarcerated individuals. Few stop to consider the correctional officers who spend their careers inside those same walls. Yet Prisonism extends beyond those who are sentenced to prison. It affects everyone who lives and works within the institution.

Prisonism is the systematic dehumanization that occurs within the prison environment. While its effects are most visible among incarcerated people, correctional officers often become its forgotten victims. They experience a different kind of harm—not because they lack power, but because they are expected to carry it.

The Problem

Correctional officers are entrusted with maintaining the safety, security, and orderly operation of correctional institutions. That responsibility is essential. However, the authority delegated to them often comes with an expectation of unquestioning compliance to institutional culture and long-established practices.

Over time, culture can become more influential than mission. Officers may feel pressure to conform to unwritten norms, follow established routines, and align with the expectations of coworkers, even when those practices do little to advance the institution's stated purpose.

This disconnect raises an important question: What is prison actually supposed to accomplish?

Citizens are sentenced to prison as punishment; they are not sentenced for punishment. The deprivation of liberty is the punishment imposed by the court. The correctional system's responsibility is to use that period of incarceration to improve conduct, reduce future offending, and prepare individuals for successful reintegration into society.

If people consistently leave prison no better equipped to live law-abiding lives than when they entered, then the institution has fallen short of its intended mission.

Why It Matters

When prisons fail to improve behavior, the consequences extend far beyond incarcerated individuals. Correctional officers spend every working day in the same environment. They are responsible for managing people whose frustrations, trauma, hopelessness, and institutionalization often remain unresolved.

Instead of working within an environment focused on growth and positive behavioral change, officers are frequently left managing chronic conflict, repeated misconduct, and ongoing crises. Over time, this can erode morale, increase stress, contribute to burnout, and make recruitment and retention even more difficult.

The relationship between incarcerated individuals and correctional staff is deeply interconnected. When one group's environment deteriorates, the other's inevitably does as well. A prison culture that discourages rehabilitation doesn't simply fail incarcerated people—it also creates a more difficult, more stressful, and often more dangerous workplace for the professionals charged with operating it.

For too long, prison reform discussions have treated the well-being of correctional staff and incarcerated people as competing interests. In reality, they are closely connected.

What Needs to Change

A more effective correctional system must recognize that improving outcomes for incarcerated individuals also improves working conditions for correctional officers. Rehabilitation and institutional safety are not opposing goals; they reinforce one another.

Correctional officers should be empowered not only to maintain security but also to contribute to an institutional culture that promotes accountability, personal responsibility, and meaningful behavioral change. When prisons successfully fulfill their mission, officers work in safer, more professional environments, incarcerated individuals leave better prepared to rejoin society, and communities benefit from lower rates of recidivism.

Reforming prison culture requires supporting both the people who live inside prisons and the professionals who work there every day.

Conclusion

Prisonism is not confined to the incarcerated population. It is embedded within the culture of the institution itself, shaping the experiences of everyone inside its walls.

Correctional officers are not merely witnesses to Prisonism—they are affected by it. Although they experience it differently than incarcerated individuals, the system's failures impose significant personal and professional costs on them as well.

A correctional system that fulfills its mission should improve the lives of everyone it touches. When rehabilitation succeeds, institutional safety improves, staff morale strengthens, and communities become safer.

Call to Action

If meaningful prison reform is to succeed, the conversation must include everyone affected by the system—not only incarcerated individuals, but also the correctional officers who dedicate their careers to maintaining our institutions.

If this article challenged your perspective, share it with someone else. Read more articles in The Prisonism Journal, join the conversation, and help build support for a correctional system that values accountability, rehabilitation, public safety, and human dignity.