Fear and Perceived Risk among Correctional Officers

Correctional officers have a challenging job; they are responsible for ensuring the safety of prisoners, but also for protecting the community by keeping prisoners separate (i.e., incarcerating them), often against their will. Ensuring the safety and security of prisoners can place officers at risk and can lead officers to be concerned about their own safety; these concerns are particularly acute in relation to victimisation and/or exposure to infectious disease. Nevertheless, few scholars have examined correctional officers’ perceptions of safety at work, particularly the challenges they face in their daily work environment. As a result, we know little about the factors that predict their fear and perceived risk of being harmed while on the job. Understanding officers’ perceptions is important because concerns about safety and perceptions of risk influence how correctional officers perform their jobs. In the current chapter, we review research on fear and perceived risk among correctional officers. We also describe how these perceptions vary as a function of both personal characteristics (e.g., age, gender, race) and workplace characteristics (e.g., input into decision-making, role ambiguity, training). Finally, we discuss the strategies correctional institutions employ to address officers’ safety concerns.