title: Queensland Custodial Correctional Officers' Perceptions of Offender Rehabilitation - A Snapshot from Lived Experience
Creators: name: French, Christopher R
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: custodial correctional officers
subject: lived experience
subject: rehabilitation

description: This research was situated in the context of custodial corrections. Specifically, it explored custodial correctional officers’ (CCOs) interactions with their work environment and their ideas on a central driving ethos of modern corrections which is rehabilitation. Rehabilitation was defined by Lipsey and Cullen (2007, p. 302), as “interactions with the offenders aimed at motivating, guiding, and supporting constructive change in whatever characteristics or circumstances engender their criminal behaviour or subvert their prosocial behaviour”. There were two purposes to this research. First, the study explored CCOs’ notions of rehabilitation at the beginning of their career and, as a result of experience in the workplace, through prisoner engagement. Second, the study considered how these findings might inform the redesign of custodial training programs. Common notions of CCOs are that they act as conduits between prisoners and intervention services and that they exert a strong rehabilitation influence on prisoners due to their exposure time with them (Ferdik &amp; Hills, 2018). This research collected and explored CCOs’ perspectives on rehabilitation and sought to understand how their conception of rehabilitation was used as a guiding practice (or not, or as something else) in working with prisoners in the custodial environment. This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews to explore the lived experience of CCOs in their workplace and their notions of rehabilitation. Participants consisted of volunteered CCOs of varying service length and experience who worked within a regional correctional centre in Queensland. The findings suggested that CCOs’ perceptions of rehabilitation were shifted positively and negatively through their lived experience and this situation impacted their rehabilitation support. Furthermore, findings revealed that participants had increased empathy towards prisoners due to the harsh living environment, critical incidents and some prisoner characteristics which aided in overcoming perceived barriers. It was found that participants’ perspectives on CCO training effectiveness were not conducive to providing satisfactory knowledge or skills to support rehabilitation practices. Recommendations are presented to inform future training design which include a balanced approach to safety and rehabilitation, ongoing professional development, mentoring programs, and education on intervention treatment programs for prisoners. Participants also believed that psychological profiles, appropriate life experience, and relevant education degrees should be selection criteria to attract recruits who are motivated to be agents of rehabilitation. Through understanding the correctional environment’s impact on a CCOs’ rehabilitation perspectives, proactive action may be initiated by correctional agency management to support and train CCOs in maintaining a rehabilitation perspective that aligned with the stated ideals of correctional agencies.