Corrections officers—often referred to as “COs”—are unique in the way they have regular, one-on-one contact with those in prison. Those routine interactions with incarcerated individuals make corrections officers a critical element in shaping the culture in carceral settings. Corrections officers create the human environment inside prisons, and set the boundaries of prison life by settling disputes, maintaining discipline, and acting as intermediaries between incarcerated individuals and other elements of the prison bureaucracy. Because they interact with the incarcerated on a daily basis and come to know their moods, personalities, and attitudes, they are often the first to identify changes that might indicate a need for mental or medical treatment, or some other intervention. Given their intensely personal level of interaction with the incarcerated, COs’ attitudes toward their charges have a profound impact on whether incarceration is “successful,” in the sense of promoting rehabilitation, reducing recidivism, and quelling future anti-social or criminal behavior. This dynamic has been a major focus of prison research in recent decades.

Unfortunately, prison workers, by and large, report profound dissatisfaction with their jobs, with high rates of on-the-job injuries, limited decision-making power, and low job satisfaction creating a high-stress work environment. Prison work is often stigmatized, and correctional officers are often overworked and underpaid. It is no surprise, then, that something like one-third of COs exhibit symptoms of depression and/or post-traumatic stress disorder. It is equally unsurprising that these conditions manifest in prison workers’ cynicism about, and even depersonalization of, the incarcerated. In many correctional settings, a negative feedback loop is created and persists: job-related stress and subpar working conditions lead to prison workers’ cynicism about the goals and purposes of incarceration, which helps to worsen conditions in prisons and jails and promotes worse outcomes for the incarcerated. Even more distressing to those who want to make prisons more humane, more rehabilitatively successful institutions, is that prison staff come to see any effort to respect the dignity and improve the living conditions of the incarcerated as an affront—a program that threatens COs’ safety and perpetuates the “us versus them” mentality that is already woven into the fabric of prison life.

This paper proposes that sustained, programmatic attention to the human dignity of the incarcerated is not opposed to, or at odds with, efforts to recognize the dignity and improve the condition of those who work in correctional institutions. Many corrections officers believe otherwise: they assert that efforts to improve prison conditions are made at the expense of their pay, security, and prestige. They oppose rehabilitative-focused prison reforms as unnecessary, wasteful, dangerous, and above all, without any benefit for them.

However, research suggests the opposite. Evidence from international settings indicates that correctional officers who endorsed more rehabilitative attitudes experienced lower levels of job stress, while those who endorsed more punitive attitudes had higher levels. In the United States, the history of the implementation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act over the past two decades strongly supports the thesis that reforms focused on the human dignity of the incarcerated have direct benefits for COs and other prison workers as well and can be successfully implemented even in the face of initial skepticism by prison workers. This suggests that a focus on human dignity and improved conditions in prisons is not an “either-or,” but a “both-and” situation. That is, outcomes for both COs and incarcerated persons are improved by reforms that seek to make prisons more humane and more rehabilitation-focused.