Farewell to Exceptionalism: An Analysis of Swedish Prisons Officers’ Attitudes Towards Prison Policy, Organisation, and Their Occupational Role in 2009 and 2019

In this chapter, we discuss changes in how Swedish prison officers experience their working conditions based on the results of a nationwide survey that was carried out on two occasions—in 2009 and 2019. During the time that has elapsed between the first and second survey, a lot has happened in Sweden that has impacted on Swedish policy relating to crime and punishment, and also the working conditions experienced by prison officers. Growing violence and criminality in society has led to a continuous ongoing competition between different political parties and camps towards tougher measures against crime. In prolongation of this “punitive turn”, prison officers’ work tasks have increasingly changed in the direction of monitoring and security work at the expense of rehabilitative and motivational efforts. The result of our comparison between two populations of prison officers points to a substantially changed prison climate. At the same time, the organisational culture has become more homogeneous, but this has happened at the expense of a degradation of the occupational role of prison officers towards pure guarding and security work. Prison officer turnover is currently high in Sweden. People with aspirations to work with motivational and rehabilitative measures no longer seem to seek careers within the prison system, and those with long work experience do not expect development towards such work tasks at this point either.