18: Working with Inmates: Part III

Britton argues that the norm in prisons becomes masculine when institutions attempt to establish gender-neutral policies and practices. The greatest contributor to this occurrence is on-the-job training which reinforces this norm, and construct correctional work as a gendered occupation. Britton only spoke with officers who had been formally trained for the purpose of her study, and found that training does not differ for males and females working toward the same job roles. Training may consist of handgun use, self-defense work, strategies for handling inmates, testing one's knowledge of general rules and one's physical abilities. Much of the training was hands-on and came from officers who were on the job. Inmates also served to assist in new officers learning the proverbial ropes. Women and men likely go into their jobs with the expectation that they will be much more violent than they end up being, due to storytelling from veteran officers during training.

These stories only make the job seem more masculine because they revolve around acts of violence and strength. When training both males and females, because the program is standardized, prison almost always means a reference to a male prison. Things like sexual harassment are not discussed in training because it is targeted towards the learning of the majority, which is to say it is targeted towards men. Men do not necessarily know how to prepare women for working in women's prisons, because they have no experience doing so. An interesting difference between men's and women's prisons is how much more lax women's prisons can be with allowing inmates to have potentially violent objects. However, male inmates were said to be the preferred inmates for correctional officers because they do not have emotional outbursts as women do, and thereby are more sensible for management. This preference is a reflection of how female officers are trained: to cater to male prisoners and not female. Training is for combating violence, not emotionality.