Prison officers as providers of social support: an analysis of the human service values and power dynamics present in prison officers' accounts of assisting inmates

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• dc.contributor.author Güerri Ferrández, Cristina
• dc.date.accessioned 2025-09-25T09:14:08Z
• dc.date.available 2025-09-25T09:14:08Z
• dc.date.issued 2025
• dc.date.updated 2025-09-25T09:14:08Z
• dc.description Data de publicació electrònica: 22 de juliol de 2025.
• dc.description.abstract Previous research has shown that prison officers often provide practical and emotional assistance to inmates. However, this has generally been depicted as a discretionary, conflicted and unrewarded task, sometimes met with hostility from their peers. Consequently, some scholars have explored why prison officers adopt such a supportive role. This study contributes to this discussion by applying the social support framework to examine the human service values and power dynamics reflected in prison officers' accounts of assisting inmates in two Spanish prisons. Findings suggest that some prison officers expand their role through the provision of instrumental and expressive support to inmates. Nevertheless, maintaining order was still an underlying theme in most interviews, suggesting that prison officers also prevent conflict and exercise power through the provision of social support. The implications of these findings in a context where prison policy is becoming increasingly security-oriented and punitive are discussed.
• dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
• dc.identifier.citation Güerri C. Prison officers as providers of social support: an analysis of the human service values and power dynamics present in prison officers' accounts of assisting inmates. Howard Journal of Crime and Justice. 2025. 12 p. DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12622
• dc.identifier.doi https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12622
• dc.identifier.issn 2059-1098
• dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/71266
• dc.language.iso eng
• dc.publisher Wiley
• dc.relation.ispartof Howard Journal of Crime and Justice. 2025. 12 p.
• dc.rights © 2025 The Author(s). The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice published by Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
• dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
• dc.rights.uri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
• dc.subject.other Presons
• dc.title Prison officers as providers of social support: an analysis of the human service values and power dynamics present in prison officers' accounts of assisting inmates
• dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
• dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion