UC Berkeley

This dissertation includes four essays, each of which speak to the importance of embracing a public management perspective in understanding the ways in which correctional officers play a critical role in the administration of justice.

Chapter 1 includes a systematic review of the literature on factors associated with violence in carceral settings, calling for greater inclusion of public management perspectives. While there are several prominent theories on what is associated with or causes violence in carceral settings, much of this work is dominated by importation theory and has been driven by analyses on limited sets of data in specific geographic contexts and with mainly individual-level factors situated largely within importation theory. This paper focuses especially on the lack of incorporation of management perspectives in the study of carceral violence. Through scraping Google Scholar results, I find that much of the literature is driven by individual-level data only, which cannot fully account for the context in which individuals are incarcerated, studies from the geographic context of the United States, largely published in criminal justice journals, and seldomly controls for staff-specific factors (i.e., disregards many crucial factors related to institutional management.) Implications for the future study of carceral violence and the limitations of the current body of evidence and our ability to develop effective solutions to carceral violence are discussed.

Chapter 2 includes co-authored work, analyzing survey data from correctional officers, focusing on how the coping mechanisms correctional officers employ to manage work-related stress, or how coping mechanisms affect workplace outcomes. To address these questions, we utilize original survey data about California correctional officers. We draw on the Stress Process Paradigm to model the relationship between exposure to violence and mental health, the impact of occupational stress on the development of coping mechanisms, and whether differential coping mechanism utilization impacts officers’ levels of cynicism and desire to leave corrections. Our findings suggest that emotion-focused coping (e.g., having someone to talk to) is associated with lower intentions to leave correctional employment, while the opposite is true for avoidant coping (i.e., alcohol abuse). These insights shed light on the problem of officer turnover and retention and provide potential direction to policymakers and practitioners seeking to create an effective, healthy workforce.

Chapter 3 includes co-authored work, focusing on the role of hierarchy in correctional officer decision-making. Hierarchy exists within bureaucratic agencies for several reasons, including to foster employee accountability. However, with hierarchy comes rigidity, and in times of emergency, this can stymie effective, expedient organizational response. Existing literature has examined the implications of hierarchy in emergency management, but limited work exists to understand hierarchy’s impacts on frontline worker decision-making during crises. In this paper, we contribute to this literature through an exploratory examination of the role of hierarchy on officer decision-making in a state prison system during the COVID-19 pandemic. As bureaucrats with the most direct interaction with incarcerated individuals, the decisions officers make have profound consequences for well-being of incarcerated people. Drawing on 50 interviews conducted amongst prison staff and incarcerated people, we utilize an expanded definition of hierarchy, one that reflects the ways in which power is granted and imposed both formally and informally. We find that correctional hierarchy is pervasive and complex, influencing officer decision-making through varying their perceived level of autonomy, despite the reality that, as street-level bureaucrats, they themselves are policymakers. Our results suggest that, to some extent, in contexts within which the imposition of hierarchy is reduced, officers autonomy may be bolstered, and this may improve their decision-making, particularly in ways that may leave incarcerated individuals under their care better-off.

Finally, Chapter 4, also including co-authored work, focuses on burnout among officers. Though correlational evidence links predictors of burnout to service delivery, limited causal evidence exists on how to improve officer well-being and how that impacts interactions with incarcerated individuals. In collaboration with a mid-sized U.S. Sheriff Department, we report results from a large-scale field experiment aimed at reducing burnout (n = 712). In an eight-week intervention, the treatment group was nudged to anonymously share experiences with others on a common platform (peer support), whereas the control was nudged to reflect on their experiences individually on a solo-access platform. Our findings suggest that peer support not only improved well-being and belonging amongst correctional officers, but also significantly improved their perceptions of incarcerated individuals. We fail to find significant differences in turnover or incident involvement, the latter of which is measured as both direct and indirect involvement in incidents within the jail or detention center. Thus, this study contributes to a burgeoning literature on how investments in public servants can causally improve well-being and perceptions of those they serve.