ABSTRACT
Correctional officers (COs) necessarily spend more time in direct contact with prisoners than any other professionals working in public safety; as such, their cognitive and behavioural orientations towards prisoners (e.g., security versus harmony; humanitarian versus punitive) have immediate consequences for prisoner well-being and institutional culture. CO orientations are reflected in communication styles that have implications for the successful adoption of responsivity principles within the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model for offender assessment and rehabilitation. Accordingly, researching and understanding CO communication styles and the underlying orientations is important for maximising assessment and rehabilitation of prisoners. In this chapter, we draw on semi-structured face-to-face interviews conducted with 40 Canadian provincial COs who worked directly with incarcerated youth, to discern which orientations were present among the COs, how the orientations impacted communications between COs and prisoners, and which styles were consistent with tenets of responsivity.
