Browsing by Author "Schultz, William"
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Item Correctional officers and the use of force as an organizational behavior(2023) Schultz, WilliamDuring the past 30 years, bureaucratic managerialism has reshaped how prison staff maintain order. Policies and graduated disciplinary models have replaced coercive methods, reducing disciplinary use of force by prison staff against incarcerated people. Managerialism, however, disguises deep problems in the interpretation and enforcement of use-of-force policies. Drawing on 131 semistructured interviews with Canadian correctional officers (COs), I show how managers and prison staff interpret and negotiate policies to justify using force to maintain order. Although COs frame policies and management supervision as significant checks on their actions, they also suggest that inconsistencies in policy interpretation and implementation facilitate certain kinds of use-of-force decisions, which I define as “construction” and “outsourcing.” I conclude by discussing the broader organizational implications of these findings.Item The floating signifier of "safety": correctional officer perspectives on COVID-19 restrictuions, legitimacy and prison order(2022) Schultz, William; Ricciardelli, RosemaryThe COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect prisons internationally. Existing research focuses on infections data, meaning we do not fully understand how COVID-19 shapes front-line prison dynamics. We draw on qualitative interviews with 21 Canadian federal correctional officers, exploring how the pandemic impacted prison management. Officers suggested inconsistent messaging around COVID-19 protocols reduced institutional and officers’ self-legitimacy, fracturing trust relationships with incarcerated people. Furthermore, officers suggest that personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gowns and face shields took on multiple meanings. We use Lévi-Strauss’ floating signifier concept to analyze how individual definitions of “safety” informed day-to-day prison routines. We conclude by arguing that legitimacy deficits and contested definitions of “safety” will continue to create uncertainty, impacting prison operations going forward.Item “Hesitation gets you killed:” perceived vulnerability as an axiomatic feature of correctional officer working personalities(2023) Schultz, WilliamResearch on correctional officers (COs) has expanded over the past two decades, giving us a broad picture into the mental health, culture, and discretionary practices of a traditionally overlooked branch of law enforcement. However, gaps in this portrait remain. Drawing on 131 semi-structured qualitative interviews with Canadian COs, I demonstrate how COs’ perceptions of vulnerability powerfully shape officer actions and working personalities. To explain this, I introduce the concept of the vulnerability axiom, a cultural heuristic that frames how officers perceive their position within prisons. COs describe themselves as vulnerable to threats posed by incarcerated people, managers, and other officers, and act in specific ways to mediate these threats. The vulnerability axiom shapes how COs perceive their position within the prison, impacting relationships with managers and incarcerated people and shaping officer control behaviors. I conclude by discussing how the vulnerability axiom may help to reframe future CO research.Item “I have to be a man for my son”: the narrative uses of fatherhood in prison(2023) Schultz, William; Bucerius, Sandra M.; Haggerty, Kevin D.Research on incarcerated fathers tends to accentuate the harmful familial consequences of parental incarceration and discuss how having children might prompt incarcerated fathers to desist from crime. Less attention has focused on how narratives of fatherhood shape the day-to-day dynamics of incarceration. Drawing on 93 qualitative interviews with incarcerated fathers in Western Canada, we focus specifically on our participants’ parenting narratives. Such narratives are significant interventions in the world, allowing incarcerated fathers to frame their identities in particular ways while simultaneously shaping personal behaviour. Our research, 1. Identifies important fatherhood narratives provided by our participants, and 2. Details how such narratives operate in prison, allowing our participants to advance personal agendas that are themselves related to the dynamics of incarceration. In doing so, we provide insights into incarcerated fathers’ situations and advance criminological efforts to appreciate how different actors entangled in the criminal justice system conceive, manage, and narrate their situation.Item “That shit doesn’t fly”: subcultural impediments to prison radicalization(2023) Bucerius, Sandra M.; Schultz, William; Haggerty, Kevin D.Many observers describe prison subcultures as inherently and irredeemably antisocial. Research directly ties prison subcultures to violence, gang membership, and poor reintegration. In extreme cases, research has also suggested that prison subcultures contribute to incarcerated people joining radical groups or embracing violent extremist beliefs. These claims, however, ignore key differences in the larger cultural and social context of prisons. We examine the relationship between prison subcultures and prison radicalization based on semistructured qualitative interviews with 148 incarcerated men and 131 correctional officers from four western Canadian prisons. We outline several imported features of the prison subculture that make incarcerated people resilient to radicalized and extremist messaging. These features include 1) national cultural imaginaries; 2) the racial profile of a prison, including racial sorting or a lack thereof; and 3) how radicalization allowed incarcerated men and correctional officers to act outside the otherwise agreed-to subcultural rules. Our research findings stress the importance of contemplating broader sociocultural influences when trying to understand the relationship between radicalization and prison dynamics and politics.