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Br J Criminol. 2021 Sep; 61(5): 1372–1389.
Published online 2021 Apr 5. doi: 10.1093/bjc/azab006
PMCID: PMC8411596
PMID: 34489617

‘We’re both here to do a job and that’s all that matters’: Cisgender correctional officer recruit reflections within an unsettled correctional prison culture

Michael Adorjan,1,1a Rosemary Ricciardelli,2 and James Gacek3
Author information Copyright and License information PMC Disclaimer

Abstract

Reflecting on new trans prisoner placement policies within Canadian federal prisons, in light of recent changes instigated under the Canadian Liberal Trudeau government, we provide knowledge from cisgender correctional officer (CO) recruits regarding these policy changes and underscore their views of working with officers who identify as transgender. Canada’s new policies recognize the presence of trans prisoners and create new protocols accordingly, simultaneously challenging some of the foundational tenets of the carceral system. While overwhelming support exists from cisgender recruits for their trans colleagues, support among a relative minority of COs is contingent upon notions like safety and security grounded in a dominantly cisgender prison culture; a culture we situate within the wider context of an unsettled correctional prison culture.

Keywords: transgender, correctional work, cisgenderism, correctional officers, Canada

INTRODUCTION

The spirit of a rather new Canadian law emphasizing trans rights as human rights has direct implications within federal correctional facilities. Implemented on 27 December 2017 under the leadership of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, prisoners may now choose to be placed in either ‘male’ or ‘female’ institutions based on their gender identity, not assigned sex at birth (Harris 2018). The policy, nevertheless, bears a direct impact on a correctional system that is traditionally sex-segregated—although not always gender-segregated—and based on the idea that sex and gender are interrelated and, arguably, indistinguishable. The accommodation of transgender [trans] prisoners in any part of the system presents ongoing obstacles for prisons (as organizations), prison staff and prisoners (Jenness and Fenstermaker 2014; Sumner and Sexton 2015). While Canadian federal prisons continue to recognize the presence of trans prisoners and attempt to address their needs, the recognition invites questioning some of the foundational tenets of the carceral system, specifically the oscillating tensions between sex segregation and the insurance of safety and security. Underpinning these tensions are concerns, tied to balancing prisoner gender identification within a sex-segregated space, that manifest in the work of correctional officers (COs) (Ricciardelli et al. 2020).

While the duties of COs in Canada include a range of job tasks ‘that are essential to the functioning of prison facilities, including maintaining the safety of prisoners, co-workers, and themselves’ (Ricciardelli et al. 2018: 458), the omnipresent uncertainty and potential for risk and violence shape how COs engage in their jobs (Farkas and Manning 1997; Ricciardelli 2019). In North America, prisons are recognized for possessing prisoner as well as officer cultures that embrace norms of masculinities—include the ideal that is the emergent hegemonic masculinity within any space (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Ricciardelli 2015; 2017), which further orients how COs manage and respond to prisoners and interact with each other. Hegemonic masculinity refers to the masculinity that emerges as dominant or empowered, placed at the top of the hierarchy of masculinities, and thus is the masculinity to which all aspire to possess, within any time, place and space (Connell 1995). Hegemonic masculinity is not the most common masculinity, instead, it serves as a benchmark that other men (and women) compare themselves too—hegemonic masculinity is malleable, responds to cultures and structures but they who possess the hegemonic ideal has situationally specific success, power, status, position and purpose (Connell 1995).

Within the rather normatively masculine space that is prison, what is rarely discussed, however, is how cisnormativity and cisgenderism influence correctional work and related understandings of masculinities. Here, cisnormativity refers to the hegemonic assumption that ‘all those born male will naturally become men, and all those born female will naturally become women’ (Bauer et al. 2009: 356 cited in Pyne 2011: 131) and cisgenderism: ‘the cultural and systemic ideology that denies, denigrates, or pathologizes self-identified gender identities that do not align with assigned gender at birth as well as resulting behaviour, expression, and community’ (Lennon and Mistler 2014: 63). In the current paper, we respond to the pronounced lacunae in knowledge by striving to bring understandings of cisnormativity, cisgenderism and transgenderism among COs to the forefront. Specifically, we unpack how cisgender CO recruits, in training at the National Training Academy (NTA), feel about the gender identity of their colleagues and their view about working with trans COs after graduation from the NTA. We first unpack recruits’ views towards working with trans COs and then highlight emergent concerns voiced, particularly the risk and insecurity COs may face in their responsibilities to manage the care and custody of prisoners when working with trans colleagues. We situate our interviews within the broader context of an unsettled cisgender correctional culture, and present implications associated with both challenges and opportunities when organizational cultures shift in response to new policy frameworks.

QUEERING THE CARCERAL

While transgender (herein ‘trans’) COs are not physically confined in prison, unlike that of prisoners, trans COs still undergo ‘the push and pull between seen and unseen’ (Rosenberg and Oswin 2015: 1278). Trans COs must balance the care, control and custodial responsibilities they are tasked with in correctional work, yet must also determine if they want to be recognized as trans by their colleagues and/or by the prisoners they are tasked to monitor and supervise. Trans prisoners can complicate the traditional parameters of institutional carceral boundaries and prisoner handling and housing procedures (Jenness and Fenstermaker 2014; Ricciardelli et al. 2020). In essence, trans prisoners may create uncertainty about enacting personal, social and carceral boundaries as prison administration officials attempt to grapple with the lived realities of being a trans prisoner (e.g. prison placement, strip search procedures, safety and security needs). Per Butler, gender binaries support the continuance of heterosexual coherence while a non-normative performance of gender ‘reveals the distinctness of those aspects of gendered experience which are falsely naturalized as unity through the regulatory fiction of heterosexual coherence’ (Butler 1999: 175 cited in Kirkup 2009: 116). Therefore, gender binaries, especially in the prison context, can be understood as helping to reinforce the naturalized and normative, yet privileged, status of heterosexuality. Said context embroils both prisoners and COs, who may act under the auspices of longstanding heteronormative policies and practices, especially in sex-segregated prison environments.

Wider discussions of trans recognition in prisons specifically and society more generally are not novel. For too long, trans lives have been invisibilized in social science research (Namaste 2000; Stryker 2017), despite efforts to highlight the inadequate attention given to trans lives, transphobia and cisgenderism (e.g. Namaste 2000; Rosenberg and Oswin 2015; Rosenberg 2017; Laidlaw 2018). Efforts have been made to redress the research lacunae, including in the area of correctional services, especially considering how the prison system is ‘probably the most significant perpetrator of violence against trans people[,]’ a focus we believe must be taken more seriously in prison studies, prisoner management, staff organization and prison organizational cultures (Spade 2008: 6). Sex-segregated prisons are ‘built upon and [produce] systems of gender normativity and heteropatriarchy’ (Vitulli 2013: 112); outcomes which, unless progressive change is implemented at all levels of prison administration, remain detrimental to trans recognition and protection for both prisoners and COs alike. Vitulli’s (2013) apt phrase ‘queering the carceral’ calls attention to the need for making more explicit structures of power in prisons that are rooted in both hetero- and cisgender-normativity, combined with the unique ‘total institutional’ context which places primacy on control and security.

Prison culture, hegemonic masculinities and the slow normalization of women COs in male prisons

In the United States, during the late 1970s, female COs made up less than 1/5 of all female correctional employees; comparatively, 1/2 of male correctional staff were COs at the time (Parisi 1984). Before the 1970s, US prisons were almost exclusively sex-segregated in terms of their staff (Britton 1997b: 799). In Canada, during the 1970s and 1980s, women COs first began working in male prisons as a result of affirmative action and equal employment initiatives (Szockyj 1989: 319). Female COs, entering a highly gendered (i.e. androcentric) prison culture, frequently faced ‘biased attitudes’ not only from prisoners—which some women COs anticipated—but also from male CO colleagues (Jurik 1985: 378; Lawrence and Marian 1998; Newbold 2005). Researchers frequently found that female COs were perceived as being less capable of managing dangerous and aggressive prisoners given their ‘greater physical weaknesses’ in comparison to male COs (Jurik 1985: 379; Britton 1997b; Szockyj 1989), or of being ‘over-protective’ and taking on a ‘mothering’ role (Jurik 1988: 296). In some early studies, a minority (one study found 30 per cent) of female COs doubted their own ability to deal with security situations (Jurik 1988: 295). Yet, despite some reservations about women COs physicality compared with men, one early Canadian survey found that ‘the presence of female officers contributed to a more relaxed, calm environment as well as an increase in morale’ (Szockyj 1989: 320), and that respondents—including prisoners, male COs and supervisors—emphasized the importance of professional competence over ‘sex’ (Szockyj 1989: 322). Nonetheless, female COs felt they were on their own to adapt to a ‘male-dominated prison organization’ due to a perceived lack of organizational support (as well as little support from supervisors and line staff) (Jurik 1988: 302). Even in the early 21st century, Hemmens and colleagues (2002: 482) still found, in their study of prisons in a rural US mountain state, that COs ‘with the least experience in corrections have the highest opinion of the abilities of female staff’. Overall, these early studies largely point to the perception that masculinities, and being male are a primary requirement of doing effective prison work (Britton 1997b; 2000).1

In the 1990s, researchers revealed that male COs attitudes appeared to shift to greater acceptance of female COs working in male prisons, with some researchers (using survey methods) finding that male COs felt female COs can do an equal, if not better, job based on their superior communication skills (Farnworth 1992: 294). By the mid-2000s, some researchers indicated that similarities outnumbered differences between male and female COs, with a high degree of acceptance and a ‘more accepting environment’ among male COs for their female co-workers (Carlson et al. 2004: 96; Ricciardelli 2019).

Institutional context, of course, shapes perceptions and experiences of any occupation and may play a more significant role over gender per se (i.e. the security level of a prison) (Szockyj 1989: 326; Farnworth 1992). It is no surprise, for instance, that COs working in maximum security prisons often experience heightened level of perceived dangerousness compared with those working in lower-security facilities (Van Voorhis et al. 1991; Lawrence and Marian 1998). As such, the security level of the men’s prison may well have a major influence on the acceptance of female COs, with higher security levels negatively impacting perceptions of female COs ability to be effective in their work (Hemmens et al. 2002). The work of Britton (1997b; 2003), in particular, has drawn attention to the ‘organizational logic’ operating in prisons that steers understandings of, and policies in relation to, gender and ‘gendered risks’ (see also Hannah-Moffat and O’Malley 2007). While day-to-day work and life within prison walls may be relatively mundane and incident-free, the omnipresent threat of violence is a potentiality that COs are well aware of, and they must be ready to respond at a moment’s notice (Britton 1997b; Ricciardelli 2019). Britton (1997b: 808) offers the prescient insight that ‘more than anything else, it is this contingency that frames resistance to women working in men’s prisons’.2

Correctional cultures and unsettled times

Occupational culture refers to ‘the values, beliefs, material objects and taken-for-granted knowledge associated with a full-time occupational role. It serves to mediate, buffer, and otherwise pattern the conflicts its practitioners face’ (Farkas and Manning 1997: 57). Correctional culture, a specific iteration, ‘constitutes a milieu where [arguably] patriarchal attitudes and behaviors persist’, such that some staff experience harassment, paternalistic interactions, and/or have difficulties socializing with peers within their work environments (Burdett et al. 2018: 331). Correctional organizations are also bureaucratic, ‘highly structured settings with an atmosphere of detachedness among management and staff’ (Mactavish 1995: 366). Like policing, in correctional services, occupational culture is polymorphous and salient at different rank levels, from officers ‘on the ground’, middle management—including prison wardens—and upper management, such as leadership within Correctional Service Canada (CSC) (cf. Farkas and Manning 1997: 58). Moreover, occupational culture is flexible and varies within and across rank levels (e.g. based on the collective working in a particular area). Given the specialization of their duties, COs, scholars argue, ‘often show resistance to acting outside their assigned roles’, placing pressure on management when they attempt to lead in new directions (Mactavish 1995: 366; Jones 2016: 251).

Ann Swidler’s (1986) argument that culture be considered as a ‘tool kit’ or ‘repertoire’ can be readily applied to correctional cultures. Swidler (1986: 273) refers to ‘an image of culture as a “tool kit” of symbols, stories, rituals, and world-views, which people may use in varying configurations to solve different kinds of problems’. The ‘tool kit’ involves ‘strategies of action’, referring to ‘persistent ways of ordering action over time’ (Swidler 1986: 273). Swidler elaborates her model by explicating how culture works regarding both ‘settled’ and ‘unsettled’ periods. In settled times and lives, Swidler (1986: 278) writes,

culture is intimately integrated with action; it is here that we are most tempted to see values as organizing and anchoring patterns of action; and here it is most difficult to disentangle what is uniquely ‘cultural’, since culture and structural circumstance seem to reinforce each other.

Culture, then, becomes reified alongside the sedimented social processes germane to particular contexts, and as such, becomes hegemonically braided with everyday life. In settled lives, social processes are neither in competition with other alternative processes for organizing experience, nor are they pronounced—they are largely the ‘norm’ (Swidler 1986: 281). Yet during unsettled times or periods of social transformation, ‘cultural meanings are more highly articulated and explicit, because they model patterns of action that do not “come naturally”’ (Swidler 1986: 284). Ideology, referring to ‘a highly articulated, self-conscious belief and ritual system, aspiring to offer a unified answer to problems of social action’, may play a more prominent role during unsettled times in directing social action in novel directions (Swidler 1986: 279). However, ideologies or ideological movement, unlike during settled times which are underpinned by uncertainty, are actively in competition with other ideologies or cultural frameworks (including common sense) (Swidler 1986: 280).

Criminologists recently applied Swidler’s model to, for instance, police oversight in the face of videos of racial profiling or excessive use of force created by citizen journalists and disseminated through social media online (Campeau 2015). As unsettled times within policing, these examinations of cultural adaptations are timely and reflect on changing ideologies and thus culture frameworks. For instance, Campeau (2019: 78) observes that especially among high-ranking officers with organizational seniority, ‘old-school sentiments’ about what constitutes best practices in policing remain and methods that will ‘get things done’ are condoned. Such officers may ‘employ various cultural resources to help them justify police conduct, including informal myths’ that run counter to new ‘unsettled’ practices and initiatives (Campeau (2019; e.g. in the case of policing today, the unsettled practices include the use of social media for informal public communication). Campeau (2019: 81) observes that the ‘new-generation’ of officers, who are often young and well educated, may not find much salience with the ‘reigning myths’ of previous, settled police culture; criticizing their ‘old-minded’ superiors with their associated atavistic modes of police work.

Like policing, correctional work is riddled with understandings positioning old versus new ways of correctional work that also informs how policy developments are interpreted by staff. For instance, previous researchers focused on COs indicate that a lack of consultation about a new policy (e.g. regarding contraband) may be met with resistance by COs who feel those who designed the policy lacked sufficient knowledge regarding the context of institutional correctional work and are thus ‘out of touch’ (Jones 2016: 257–8). Concerns about policies arguably detached from front line realities often centre on staff safety, specifically perceived as increasing the risk under which COs work. In Jones’ (2016) study of a policy change regarding contraband, COs were not aware of the wider intent and purpose of the policy change, and their reservations were thus exacerbated; a particularly trying reality given COs’ tasked to explain policy changes to those in their custody and implement such changes.

In many respects, correctional work, like police work, is ‘people work’ in that the emphasis is primarily on communication (e.g. communication is central to care, custody and control). The predominant goal for COs in correctional work is to manage the behaviours of prisoners which require observing and understanding ‘human behavioural cues’, especially those signalling where potential conflict or poor prisoner well-being is imminent (Ericson and Haggerty 1997; Farkas and Manning 1997: 53).

CURRENT STUDY

COs are the direct line of contact for prisoners to their essential and non-essential services, the outside world, and are responsible for ensuring the safety and security of the prison and all those inside its walls (Robinson et al. 1993; Lambert et al. 2010; Griffin et al. 2012; Ricciardelli 2019). In many respects, COs are also serving time—despite their technical freedoms—alongside the prisoners they are charged with managing (Ricciardelli 2019). Compounding the concern is the array of ad hoc policies emerging around trans prisoner placement and entitlements in Canada (CSC 2017a; 2017b), which create unsettled times (Swidler 1986). In response, understanding interpretations of cisnormativity, cisgenderism and transgenderism—within the context of changing policies—among COs provided the impetus for the current study. We attempt to bridge a connection between CO needs and trans issues; by bringing the two together, we suggest an examination of the former should move in lockstep with the latter. How do cisgender CO recruits, in training at the NTA, feel about the new policies in place and the gender identity of their colleagues?

METHOD

We used a qualitative research paradigm in the current study. The data were grounded in the perspectives of the participants in ways consistent with Bogdan and Biklen (2003: 2), who argue data collection is ‘rich in description of people, places and conversations’ and research questions are formulated ‘to investigate topics in all their complexity’. They suggest that the qualitative researcher becomes ‘bent on understanding, in considerable detail, how people think … and how they came to develop the perspectives they hold’ (Bogdan and Biklen 2003: 3). Such an approach is helpful to qualitatively investigate how our participants understand the gender identity of their colleagues, their prior experiences with trans persons, and their perceptions of potentially working with trans co-workers once deployed to work in a correctional facility (e.g. prison). Our emphasis on understanding interpretations also draws from a conscious agnosticism towards the social problems being examined to best centre on interpretation and verstehen.

CO recruits (n = 66) were interviewed to provide baseline data about their view of their future occupation as a federal CO, their expectations of the nuances of correctional work, and the complexities of CO responsibilities. Recruits were completing the third stage of the Correctional Training Program (CTP) in 2018–2019 at CSC’s NTA. In terms of demographics, 57.8 per cent (n = 33) of the sample were men, while the remaining 42.2 per cent (n = 24) were women, and their ages ranged from 19 to 54 years. The majority of the participants self-identified as White (78.9 per cent, n = 45) while the identities of the remaining participants (21.1 per cent, n = 12) ranged from Black, Indigenous, Metis and First Nation to South Asian, Chinese and Japanese, respectively.3

In-depth semi-structured interviews with all CO recruits were conducted in person at a locale used by the NTA. The primary investigator introduced the study to each class within the training program, and at this time, consent forms were administered. Interested recruits filled out the forms and, to set up an interview, provided their contact information. Those who did not consent (<5 per cent) did not provide contact information. Participants were informed that study participation was completely voluntary during the process of obtaining consent. Interviews were conducted in private spaces, with each interview ranging from 55 to 120 minutes, and followed the conversational paths put forth by participants. A 39-item open-ended interview guide was used during interviews, but not adhered to strictly. The guide constituted a checklist of topics to be unpacked during the interviews, while also providing ample opportunity to probe emergent conservational paths or topics of interest as expressed by the interviewee. Interviews were broad in scope, and aimed at gaining insight into the mental health and well-being of CO recruits as well as how different policies and their training shaped their understanding of their future occupation.4 Interviews were digitally voice recorded and transcribed verbatim; pseudonyms are applied to protect participant identities and any other information that could identify a participant is removed. Direct quotes are edited for readability.

Once collected, the content from the interviews were coded to facilitate the analysis process. We used a semi-grounded approach to qualitative coding (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Ricciardelli et al. 2010). Put differently, the coding scheme was developed inductively, reviewing responses, and cataloguing themes in an emergent fashion. Researchers re-read each response to examine broader assumptions, themes and meanings underpinning what participants articulated. We immersed ourselves in the data to develop a fully exhaustive list of themes. In doing so, our process made the data more manageable, while simultaneously allowing for a more complex and in-depth analysis of recruits’ experiences.

We cannot say for certain if some of the responses to trans prisoner policies were due to CO recruits feeling social pressure to express positive views. However, interviews were geared to push beyond concise affirmative or critical responses, in order to mine details regarding attitudes and perspectives, which includes, as we detail below, qualifications and reservations in relation to working in prison environments.

RESULTS

The unsettled prison culture of today is rooted in uncertainties about navigating gender identification within a traditionally sex-segregated prison space. Within the current environment, the vast majority of our CO recruit participants expressed support for both the rather recent trans prisoner placement policies (e.g. the option to be placed by gender identity rather than biology), as well as for potential trans colleagues. Although most recruits agreed with the current legislation, many also suggested that in practice determining the placement of prisoners in male or female prisons needed to be done on a case-by-case basis (see Ricciardelli et al. 2020). Recruits’ interpretation of gender identity closely aligns with perceptions of risk and trans CO safety. Across our interviews, 66 COs expressed strong support, with 69 references coded (i.e. a number of participants made numerous positive references). In contrast, only eight COs expressed disapproval, with a total of eight references made. In the results, we highlight trends among the former group before turning to the latter.

‘[I]t’s your business, not mine’: support for transgender COs

There was no question among the CO recruits that work in correctional services involved a new and unsettled aspect: policies regarding trans prisoners. Support was, nevertheless, quite high. Participant 26 (P26) expressed support bluntly: ‘It’s none of my business’. Acknowledging that all prison work is informed by risk, participants also recognized that there may be risks trans officers specifically will face working in prison, thus adding ‘I feel like it should ultimately come down to choice. Some are aware of the risks and they still choose to go to [deleted] institution for that. I think they have the right to make that particular decision for themselves’. The salient choice for a CO to make, whether cisgender or trans, requires acknowledging the risks involved in prison work; once the risk is understood or acknowledged, one’s gender identity, according to this participant, is irrelevant to the occupational work. For instance, P47 explained that gender identity was irrelevant because ‘…as long as you’re doing your job I don’t care’. Other COs expressed support in a similar fashion, referring to the importance of trusting in recruits who have successfully completed their training as being prepared for what the job entails. Here, like with any other co-worker, central to the settled CO culture was the idea that they wanted their colleagues to be qualified COs willing to engage in the same job tasks and challenges, and to have their back on duty—three vital components of the CO ‘tool kit’.

Regardless of how a CO gender identified, they, including any trans CO, in settled times, had to have the skill set and capacity to balance care and custodial responsibilities and thus manage prison functions; including showing a united front to any issue arising in their jobs. In essence, what remains paramount is the capability and capacity to do the work underpinning CO roles and responsibilities, which thus ensures the well-being of staff and prisoners alike. Participant 38, for instance, specifies that all COs had to complete CTP at the NTA to be qualified to engage in correctional work:

P38: …If they made it past core [CTP] that means that they’re qualified to work as an officer and I’ll work with them. If I have personal differences with them that’s neither here nor there because we’re both here to do a job and that’s all that matters.

As evidenced above, P38 recognizes that colleagues may have ‘personal differences’ but if an authoritative body has designated an officer as qualified then there should be no concern, particularly regarding if the officer is cisgender or trans. Training, for COs, represents a strategy for risk navigation and negation as, at work, COs may face a precarious situation requiring intervention and it is their occupational responsibility to ‘neutralize any potential hostile situations’ (Ricciardelli 2017: 16). All COs negotiate risk, and as participants indicate in their support of trans COs, regardless of how one self-identifies, core to being a CO is to perform their occupational responsibilities. Any unsettling of correctional culture must be appreciated as coming into friction with the wider settled aspect involving risk and security management. Uniting as one collective centred on doing their job well builds trust between CO co-workers, providing a more effective way of confronting risk in correctional work in the hope of mitigating or removing it from the prison space.

Some COs, beyond offering strong support for trans CO colleagues, expressed a degree of sympathy for the discrimination and additional occupational complexities they may encounter. For example, asked if a trans CO should be able to work in both male and female units, P6 replied:

To me, personally, I have zero issue with whoever wants to identify as who they are and what gender they are. As far as a woman working on a man’s unit if that means I’m doing the strip search or other things according to policy that makes no difference to me. That doesn’t bother me at all. To me, I would feel bad for a transgender person if they were going through the process of dealing with [the] political policy side of it. Can I do this, can I do that. That’s the stressful part of being a man responding to a women’s unit.

P6’s words voice concern over navigating policies engendering unsettled times, here linked to new policies regarding trans prisoners. These new policies and practices are not yet solidified for trans COs (or at times for trans prisoners), e.g. policies around strip searchers or being a primary worker in a women’s prison. P6’s words also indicate a lack of felt agency in relation to the ‘political policy side’ of things, which is a notable obstacle and may act to stymie progress regarding unsettled cultures.

While it is true that many of the recruits interviewed did not personally know any trans COs, and thus their remarks should be seen as hypothetical, though authentic support, a few recruits did have some experiences working with trans COs within the provincial or territorial prison systems. P78, e.g. supported trans COs to work

wherever they want to go pretty much. I know there’s a few in the institutes right now … apparently it’s been a positive experience so far so, there hasn’t been any harassment or anything. So whatever floats their boat, if they want to go to the men’s institute, if they want to go to a female institute, sure.

Similarly, P77 revealed they ‘work[ed] with a transgendered CO provincially. …And everyone was actually pretty accepting of him’. Despite the unsettled culture, participant 78 refers positively to acceptance of trans CO colleagues working within any units or institutions (e.g. with prisoners of any gender). In the latter excerpt, P77 casually refers to experiences of acceptance rather than resistance to working with a trans colleague. Overall, the very experience of working with trans colleagues in prison reflects the notion that trans COs do effective work that may be without incident from other COs or prisoners. Nevertheless, those COs interviewed for the current project more often did not have personal experience working with trans colleagues, and, despite their overall positive support, expressed support with qualifications. We argue that these qualifications are directly related to the persistence of the settled correctional culture; i.e. with its continued emphasis on risk-minimization and securitization.

Qualifying support: negotiating gender, safety and security

Prison environments are structured by hierarchical relations of power and real, or perceived, risk and the mitigation of risk, uncertainties, and insecurities is an ever-present challenge. To mitigate perceived or experienced vulnerabilities that can interfere with occupational responsibilities, COs appropriate strategies of risk negation, and continue to adapt to new vulnerabilities that emerge (Ricciardelli 2017). Hannah-Moffat (1999: 89) indicates risk ‘is a fractured, fluid and flexible category that can be linked to a wide range of strategies and techniques aimed at governing offenders as well as the wider law-abiding population. The impact and meaning of risk is often contingent upon the objective of governing’. Prisons, as spaces where risk of conflict and violence is omnipresent, require the mitigation and negotiation of risk, wherein such spaces COs achieve their gendered positions in light of perceived, experienced or understood vulnerabilities, directing attention towards trans recognition and marginalization, and supplementing the concern with CO risk mitigation (Ricciardelli 2017).

Perhaps it is without surprise that support for trans COs was also caught within a nexus of balancing safety and security interests, where, some recruits felt, the responsibilities of correctional work increased the risk for trans COs (as trans persons in a cisnormative setting), and for themselves as well. Concerns of potential risk arose, e.g. as voiced by P37:

I think the thing for me[,] like I feel like if you’re qualified and solid mentally and […] you’re good […] but if somebody’s … comfortable with that[,] that’s just who they are and I’m comfortable with it[,] but […] I’m just sure people making that transition have a lot of issues and I just don’t know … Yeah if they look like a woman but you know they say they’re a man and like […] it’s just human nature[,] like you’re […] not gonna feel as comfortable then just working with a man[.] In a correctional officer environment […] I just would feel safer working with a man. Basically there’s nothing against transgender or anything, like I support the decision, I want them to be happy, cause if it was me I would wanna be happy and be who I am, but at the same time in a correctional environment, in high stress, high danger environments I’d feel way more comfortable with, you know, a man.

In effect, P37 indirectly connects stress and danger with cis masculinity, and risk negation with cisgenderism; viewing threats in prison as best responded to by cisgender males COs, rather than trans or cisgender female COs. Within the unsettled prison culture, support for trans COs is qualified with respect to risks germane to federal prisons, particularly maximum security institutions. Other COs expressed support, while suggesting challenges lie mostly with older staff who retain cisgendered normative assumptions. For instance, asked if trans COs present any challenges or confusion regarding where they would be allowed to work, P58 responds:

I literally could think that it could cause issues with staff and inmates just for the simple fact that it’s, I don’t wanna say unaccepted but there is a dynamic of generational gaps. …And I mean some just will not accept [trans COs]. …Um that being said it’s the same thing with accepting a female in a male institution that it’s been done. (emphasis added)

P58 feels that a lack of acceptance could emerge from both staff and prisoners (regarding recruit views of trans prisoners more specifically, see Ricciardelli et al. 2020), but suggests that the problem lies in a generational gap with senior officers’ interpretations of trans COs. Said officers have been identified as presenting a challenge for accepting female staff working on men’s units in prior correctional research (Jurik 1988; Britton 1997a). Similar challenges are found elsewhere in criminal justice organizations, for instance, unsettled police cultures, where a generational gap between the ‘old guard’ may impede adoption and incorporation of new cultural dynamics (Campeau 2019).

As seen here, interpretations of risk and safety are caught up in concerns about gender identity positioning and, in essence, how positioning will be interpreted by those within prisons; interpretations that can create vulnerabilities rooted in uncertainty about how gender identity can shape dynamics on a unit. Since there are no clear boundaries, a ‘grey area’ exists and it is one that is characterized by uncertainty and risk in the minds of the recruits. In summary, interviewees largely support trans COs, however, support was caveated in some cases by trans positioning neither interfering with occupational responsibilities nor placing undue risk on staff.

Qualifying support: ‘drawing a line’ regarding gender presentation and interpretations

Another issue raised among our participants is tied to the physical appearance underpinning the gender presentation of trans COs. P12, for instance, who declares ‘I have no issue’ working with trans COs, nevertheless felt that ‘it depends on when you started transitioning. The younger you start the more … I think you may have a harder time for the men than the women. I don’t think the women would care’. In a similar vein, P20 feels that the new CSC transgender policy (i.e. giving prisoners the choice to be placed based on gender identification rather than genitalia)

leaves them [the CSC] in limbo right now. …I guess if you have, if you’ve had 100% sex change, which means you’ve had all of the parts changed, then I guess you’re a woman there’s nothing you can say. But, if you’re still within the transition period [i.e., male genitalia], I don’t think that should be right. …there’s got to be a line drawn somewhere.

The notion that acceptance is contingent on ‘how far [trans COs] are in their transition’ (P8) is expressed across a sizable minority of the recruits interviewed, evidencing that cisnormative assumptions do shape interpretations of trans individuals, creating a metaphoric ‘line’ that is informed by heteronormative reification of gender.

Significantly, P9, expressing similar reservations regarding trans COs, raising the possibility of trans COs working in alternative, less visible positions such as ‘camera operator’ during an incident or in the bubble (the control post off the unit). P9 states ‘if it is somebody that’s going through the transition while they’re working with you, there’s all kinds of different fields of work that you can do that doesn’t have to relate directly to physical interactions’. Similar to earlier research among male COs who expressed qualified support for female COs so long as they took up less ‘front line’ work that could involve physical interactions and altercations with prisoners, P9’s preference would be for transitioning COs to work in correctional areas peripheral to the central duties of a CO. Said admission is valuable—it indicates a cisnormative placement of trans COs in their ‘right’ place, i.e. in a physical and social space relatively invisible to the ‘real’ work on the front lines—again evidencing the cisgendered framing that informs sex segregation correctional spaces.

Another area of unsettled culture is practices related to conducting strip searches. Before the introduction of the transgender prisoner policy, as a number of participants informed us, the strip searching of male prisoners was conducted exclusively by male COs, and searches of female prisoners are conducted by female COs. In many prisons, given the new policy, transgender prisoners may require both male- and female-identifying COs to conduct the searches, for instance, if a prisoner has breasts but male genitalia, a female CO will search their top half (above the waist) and a male CO conduct the below the waist search. While many of the interviewed recruits expressed no reservations regarding the new practices in place, a minority did express reservations. P7, for instance, revealed ‘we’ve started getting some transgender inmates at [institution] before I left so it was like, guys search the bottom half, girls search the upper half. It was such a hassle’. P20 also expressed concern about CO rights in the context of conducting strip searches: ‘What about the female guards’ rights to not have to search a man? … The line has to be drawn somewhere and it seems nobody is willing to draw the line right now’. P7’s remark indicates the shift to an unsettled culture is being experienced by some (an arguable minority of) COs as a ‘hassle’, while P20’s statement indicates uncertainty regarding policy implementation during this unsettled time in Canadian federal correctional services (and again raises the theme of ‘drawing a line’ regarding implementation of new correctional policies). P55 stated that a number of their colleagues ‘didn’t feel comfortable’ with the new policy around strip searches, and that ‘it wasn’t my decision’, indicating a feeling that the policy change was implemented without consultation with COs and others who are on the front lines responding to the changes. Such concerns were exacerbated by the notion that strip search practices could still change, and thus a female CO or a male CO may be required to do a ‘full search’ despite if they are comfortable doing so or not.

Noteworthy, underscoring participant reservations is often overall support for both trans prisoner policies on placement and support for trans CO under the employ of CSC. P57, asked how they feel in general about trans officers and where they work, replied ‘I think that they should be respected’. Asked further about where they should be able to work, P57 reflects in more detail:

Well it [sighs] that’s tricky too because it depends if, it depends if your offender population know [a CO’s gender identity] because say I work in a women’s institution but I was born male but I’ve transgendered into a female and you have female offenders that have been badly abused by males; it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re gonna accept this now female as a female they may still view this person as being male.

Here the issue is about how trans COs will be received by the prisoners themselves and the possible consequences on prisoners with traumatic histories who may be ‘triggered’ by the presence of a trans officer. Physical appearance appears to underpin the unsettled culture, creating a novel positioning that requires a renegotiation of ‘strategies of action’ to create a space informed by patterns of action that require efforts and contemplation (i.e. they do not come naturally; Swidler 1986: 273).

Confirming the unsettled culture, many of our participants, themselves cisgender CO recruits, expressed reservations with a degree of self-awareness and awkwardness. Some admitted to not having thought before about the issue of trans prisoner placement policies nor working alongside trans CO colleagues. P37, during a remark about trans officers commented ‘I don’t know, I’m making myself sound like a dick here’, and later, commenting on whether they felt they could identify a trans CO said ‘I think I’m digging myself a hole here’. Similarly, P7, like many others, voiced no concerns working with trans COs, though hesitated to engage in conversations of trans support because of their uncertainty around trans-related issues:

Interviewer: What about transgender officers?

P7: Oh, I like to stay far away from these conversations because I’m afraid I’m going to offend somebody. For me, I don’t care if you think you’re a guy or girl it’s your business, not mine. I don’t really know how to phrase this correctly. Depending on which way they’re going with their switch it’s like, ‘I don’t know how to address you’. I’ve never really run into it. I don’t understand it but that’s not their problem that I don’t get it. I don’t really have an issue with it.

As P7’s words demonstrate, they feel that boundaries (e.g. ‘I don’t know how to address you’) are unclear in the present unsettled cisgender correctional culture, and thus creating uncertainty in how to engage in conversation about trans issues. As proposed often across recruits, the idea is to create personal boundaries that serve to respect their colleagues’ personal lives. While P7 is not concerned with trans COs as co-workers, the uncertainty of how to address a trans person and the lack of experience working with trans people causes P7 to distance their roles and responsibilities as COs from trans concerns. In consequence, P7 indirectly and undoubtedly leaves trans recognition and accommodation unresolved. However, to remain unconcerned or distance oneself from the needs and concerns of trans people (especially co-workers) can be interpreted as indirectly permitting the alienation and isolation of trans COs.

Transgressing cultural patterns and work norms

Participants were introduced to trans prisoners and gender regulation during their training and some, with prior experience working in correctional services at the provincial or territorial level, had experience with trans prisoners in custody. Education at the NTA, taught to COs and between COs, incrementally progressed discussion forward, with the hopes of changing cisnormative cultural practices and work norms in prison. P49 shows that education on and compassion towards trans issues remains significant. They describe that in their prior occupational work as a CO in a prison for women they sought to change the settled CO culture to be more understanding about trans prisoners.

P49: I have tried to educate my other officers back in my female institution and they just—‘Ah, we”ll just call “it”’. And I’m like, ‘No, that’s not respectful, you don’t do that because they’re still human beings’. But, ah, I think there should be certain officers with the training that are, like, truthfully understanding of that stuff and truthfully and honestly compassionate towards that, because that’s a whole other situation in itself. I don’t think we should just throw a bunch of officers in there that got the training of being sensitive to those issues. I think they should seek out officers that are truly compassionate towards those things. Because when you’re an offender and you’re being called ‘it’ and you are already at the lowest part of your life—like, you don’t need that on top of it.

P49 describes making attempts in their prior workplace to educate fellow co-workers on trans issues. Recognizing the already marginalized status of prisoners, P49 feels that education and training alone are not enough for COs to understand trans issues. Compounding education and training should be empathy, compassion and respect; qualities that could be used to incrementally shift cisnormative prison spaces towards more progressive organizational cultures and work norms. Education and training on trans concerns and issues remain paramount, especially in how education and training are enacted and materialize within prison environments. To be educated on these matters, however, is no simple task; particularly given the complexity of such concerns.

DISCUSSION

Trans prisoners are ‘uniquely vulnerable to abuse and harm in the prison context’ (Matychuk 2019: n.p.). Yet, what has been neglected until now has been a comprehensive examination of how cisgender COs prospectively perceive their trans counterparts; where, we argue, changing policies and practices around trans prisoner placement in federal correctional services in Canada inform an unsettled culture. People in powerful organizational positions, when tasked with ushering in new—and unsettling—practices and policies, may be ‘some of the staunchest supporters of non-change’ (Campeau 2019: 82). But even when support from upper levels is apparent, challenges may remain on the ground in terms of resistance and the perpetuation of informal practices involving ‘recipes’ of knowledge in action that remain linked to practices of safety and security (Shearing and Ericson 1991; Marks 2004). This may become even more salient where novel strategies are enacted to reframe the environment. Overall, within the context of the high-risk occupation, and in light of COs’ perceived vulnerabilities, a CO’s successful negotiation of vulnerabilities or imposition of risk negation has the potential to reinforce positions of power, privilege and dominating cis norms germane to both settled cultures within and outside of corrections. Cisgender support, while apparent, is also, for some of our recruits, contingent on the insurance that dominant risk mitigation strategies remain unaffected, and prison operations run as normal. Such a request, while seemingly minor, runs the risk of ensuring that cisnormative prison culture continues to deny or denigrate the existence of trans persons working within prison facilities. COs develop strategies of risk negation that are designed to ensure they maintain some semblance of authority (as individuals and a group) over prisoners. As such, some participants indicate that they feel comfortable engaging in CO work with cisgender colleagues, given their view that prisons are ‘high stress, high danger environments’, however, they are less comfortable working with someone who is not comfortable in their gender identity.

In our sample of cisgender recruits, support exists for their trans colleagues, yet, for some the support remains circumstantial upon notions like safety and security (or more specifically risk and insecurity). Underpinning risk and insecurity in prison is a predominately cisgender beliefs system, ingrained in a traditionally cisnormative prison environment like the Canadian federal prison system; in response, cisgenderism and cisnormativity continue to dominate. Best intentions directed towards organizational change may be thwarted by extant cultures, and subcultures, and its power to retain status quo practices on the front lines despite changing policies or rhetoric from above (Goldstein 1990; Marks 2004). While COs develop risk negation strategies in light of perceived, experienced and understood vulnerabilities (Ricciardelli 2017), one must reconsider whether such strategies (grounded in cisgender norms) interfere or impede trans COs’ well-being, identity and agency. The risk potentially posed to trans COs has yet to investigated, and future researchers, we argue, should explore more directly trans CO experiences. Cisgender norms challenge gender identities that do not align with the prison facilities’ processes of risk negation, and should it be the case that gender performances are continually challenged and negotiated by COs in the risk context of correctional work, then trans CO well-being, identity and or agency may indirectly suffer as a consequence of cisnormative prison protocol.

Inherent in strategies of risk avoidance are expressions of qualities (e.g. being job qualified, and effectively able to respond to circumstances that jeopardize safety and well-being) that are culturally read as appropriate in correctional work. Vulnerability is an inescapable part of correctional work; shaping relationships between cisgender CO recruits and understandings of what it means to affirm a position that ensures respect and status. Taken together, such qualities reaffirm dominating protocols of risk management, and by extension, further entrench cisgender norms into cisnormative prison spaces—informing a settled CO cultural tool kit (Swidler 1986). To challenge, and eventually change, the structures within the prison system, the discursive work (and actual practices) enacted by COs that address trans needs and resolve trans concerns are paramount. There is opportunity for future researchers to apply Swidler’s (1986) model of culture as toolkit and cultural transformation not only towards correctional services but policing and other areas salient to criminological research. Such research is geared to capture how adaptations in policy related to trans persons within specific working environments play out in practice—is progress towards changing cultural norms and environmental nuances around gender evidenced?

In the case of new Canadian federal government policies regarding transgender prisoner placement, the wider intent is readily acknowledged but concerns regarding safety and security are not necessarily allayed based on greater awareness of policy intention. To help ameliorate longstanding normative assumptions of gender and hegemonic masculinity as embedded in correctional spaces, scholars frequently point to the need for training to help draw officer sensitivity to these issues (Hemmens et al. 2002), including the training of correctional management to help instil a more robust ‘top-down’ impact (Cheeseman et al. 2011). However, while education and training remain an invaluable asset to reconsidering trans needs (prisoners and COs alike), to shift the prison organizational dial from its settled culture towards trans recognition and accommodation requires greater understandings of those working on the front lines of the system, including their perceptions and experiences. Top-down changes are, from this perspective, necessary but insufficient to robust and sustainable transformation for the betterment of both CO and prisoner safety and security.

Limitations

Our study is limited in that interviews were conducted with CO recruits, some with and some without experience working in prisons or any personal relationships or experiences with transgenderism. Thus, although many lack experiences, and while interviews with more seasoned COs may generate different results informed by occupational experiences, highlighting CO recruit understandings is pivotal in anticipating the opportunities and challenges facing prison work in unsettled times. Future follow-up data will be key to determining if recruits experience a change their initial positions, perhaps fostering greater empathy and understanding around such issues or, perhaps, the opposite. In addition, our sample for the current paper is limited to 66 recruits, and we caution, as with any qualitative data, against generalizability.

Moreover, our project is limited in that more research is needed that directs attention to what aspects of organizations may be characterized as settled or unsettled. In Canadian corrections, longstanding settled correctional culture is challenged in particular ways by unsettling its cisgendered hegemony. Future ethnographic studies that, in particular, have the potential to uncover not just what is said but witness what is done are needed. In addition, studies that are solely interview-based may also produce valuable knowledge if longitudinal in design, especially those that follow COs over several years where new policies and practices are being implemented (Marks 2004: 870).

CONCLUSION

CO recruits understand their occupational responsibility of providing care, custody and control towards trans prisoners and working with trans COs. Recruits’ hesitations, concerns and avoidances of how gender identities and expressions are to be perceived and managed in prison evidence the unsettled culture around gender and leave both trans prisoners and trans COs open to the risk of victimization. As the voices of recruits reveal, trans CO placement and protection go hand in glove; and together, they reveal a plethora of gender diverse dilemmas situated within a public institution where how to accommodate trans persons, gender identity and expression remains uncertain. Moreover, trans CO placement is outside of policy (e.g. the policy speaks only to trans prisoners) and not discussed in practice, leaving the situation even more ambiguous and unsettled.

Our findings suggest that while some recruit expressions of support for trans recognition and accommodation were genuine, others’ support was contingent on trans recognition and accommodation not interfering with the daily operations, specifically impeding the safety, of the prison. Arguably, by separating trans issues from occupational responsibilities and duties, correctional work routines could continue as normal; recruits could focus on their correctional work unimpeded by the unsettling of routines and cisgender norms, rather than emphasize and unpack trans issues. Yet alongside changes in the wider society, correctional work is changing, and ignoring these changes ultimately raises risks for both COs and prisoners.

As part of continued efforts to address trans lives and needs within carceral spaces and Canadian prison studies, our findings have tapped into a significant and relatively undisturbed vein of knowledge. By examining how cisgender CO recruits draw on prior experiences of or prospectively perceive working with trans COs, we produce unique insights into trans issues currently facing Canadian prisons. Yet such a discussion also requires us to critically query future implications for the ways trans issues are tied up with understandings of sex, sex segregation, gender and gendered identities both in prison and society at large. A serious reconsideration of the treatment of trans people requires, in part, as Karasik (2018: n.p.) suggests, a revitalization in investing in trans lives before they become criminalized, such as focusing on housing, jobs, social assistance and access to health care. For trans COs, a similar reinvestment in correctional organizational practices should be adopted, adapted and amended to accommodate trans individuals who wish to build their careers in correctional services. In terms of combating risk and violence in prison, a prison policy change is a start, but certainly more must be done; given prison structures themselves reinforce binary understandings of gender and thus are exclusive rather than inclusive. For example, the US-based National Center for Transgender Equality (transequality.org) provides a suite of publications for lawyers, advocates and correctional officials to update and implement policies impacting trans prisoners. These publications include a guide for officials to understand trans issues and trans peoples’ legal rights and to promote policies that increase safety for and respect of trans prisoners (National Center for Transgender Equality 2018). The guides could be similarly replicated, amended and applied in Canadian federal prisons. Of course, revamping policies regarding trans people in prisons remains important, but as Banks (2015: n.p.) contends, ‘it also promotes the idea that something monumental has been accomplished, and the fear is that allies to trans people can wipe their hands clean and move on’. Rather than wiping our hands clean and moving on, we supplement trans activism and liberation demanding ‘a significant social shift in how trans people are viewed and treated by society’ (Banks 2015: n.p.). We provide a unique opportunity to reconsider correctional work alongside access to services for trans people, offering new possibilities for trans recognition, accommodation and organizational transformation (Pyne 2011: 134).

Footnotes

1While our focus here is gender, it is worth noting that scholars have found discrimination of female COs woven with racial prejudice as well as derogatory views of LGBTQ+ officers, i.e. where female officers are denigrated by labelling them ‘lesbians’ (Britton 2003; Griffin et al. 2005; Crewe 2006: 405).

2Britton (1997a; 1997b) did question if gender-neutral policies unintentionally sustain gender inequalities among COs rather than ease them.

3We are unaware of any publicly available statistics documenting the size of the trans CO population or prisoner population.

4Concerns about safety emerged spontaneously in discussions about trans CO or trans prisoner placement although we did ask CO recruits if they had concerns about safety tied to their occupational choice in the larger interview.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers (UCCO-SACC-CSN), the Correctional Services of Canada, and the Union of Safety and Justice Employees, and the National Training Academy staff and recruits whose support and/or participation produced the knowledge we reported on in the current paper. We would also like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for very helpful feedback regarding an earlier version of this paper.

FUNDING

We are grateful for funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Catalyst Grant #411387 and Team Grant # 440140, and for funding provided by Correctional Service Canada.

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