A Qualitative Study of Organizational and Psychosocial Factors in the Burnout of Italian Correctional Officers

• DOI: 10.1177/0032885520968246
• Author: Ilaria Coppola,Laura Migliorini,Nadia Rania
• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Date: 01 December 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885520968246

The Prison Journal

2020, Vol. 100(6) 747 –768

© 2020 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032885520968246

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Article

A Qualitative Study

of Organizational and

Psychosocial Factors in

the Burnout of Italian

Correctional Officers

Nadia Rania1, Laura Migliorini1,

and Ilaria Coppola1

Abstract

Correctional officers (COs) are subject to the development of burnout

syndrome. This investigation focuses on those factors that contribute to

burnout syndrome in COs who work in Italian penitentiary institutions.

Utilizing a qualitative methodology with 50 northern Italian COs, the study

finds burnout to be caused by two types of factors, organizational and

psychosocial. Notably, the results highlight feelings of anguish, sadness, and

abandonment and CO requests for psychological help.

Keywords

correctional officer, work role, Italy, burnout, stress

Introduction

While burnout was first conceptualized by Freudenberger (1974), the defini-

tion commonly used today was created by Maslach and Jackson (1981).

Redefined, burnout is a syndrome of depersonalization, emotional exhaus-

tion, and reduced personal accomplishment (Borgogni & Consiglio, 2005;

1Univesity of Genoa, Italy

Corresponding Author:

Nadia Rania, Department of Education Science, University of Genoa, C.so Andreà Podestà 2,

16128 Genoa, Italy.

Email: nadia.rania@unige.it

968246TPJXXX10.1177/0032885520968246The Prison JournalRania et al.

research-article2020

748 The Prison Journal 100(6)

Boudoukha et al., 2013; Bria et al., 2014; Maslach & Goldberg, 1998;

Maslach & Jackson, 1981; Pietrantoni et al., 2003). More specifically, this

syndrome stems from stress induced mainly by working in direct contact with

people who are suffering both physically and socially. Furthermore, the lit-

erature highlights how burnout, which has repercussions for the individual’s

personal life, is a process that manifests itself over time and results from fac-

tors related to his or her work rather than personal characteristics (Lambert,

Hogan, Barton-Bellessa, et al., 2012a; Maslach & Goldberg, 1998).Therefore,

to evaluate burnout, it is necessary to focus on the connection between the

individual’s work situation and his or her personal experiences. The research

also shows how emotional exhaustion exerts a cost on employees and the

organization as a whole (Lambert et al., 2010).

As the literature documents (Baudino, 2014; Ferrari, 2016), burnout can

manifest itself in all professions, with very strong relational implications,

compromises in workers’ conduct, and high employee turnover. For these

reasons, the problem of burnout is of considerable interest in the prison con-

text, where correctional officers share their work spaces daily with people

who are suffering and where the psychophysical condition of these officers

affects both users and the organization itself.

As noted by Lambert et al. (2010), the employees of correctional institu-

tions represent “the heart and soul” (p. 111) of these institutions. Therefore,

their malaise, expressed as burnout, has consequences for them, their cowork-

ers, their family members, and for the entire organization. These profession-

als who are in direct contact with prisoners (Dial, 2010) have the major

responsibility for prisoners’ adapting to prison life and, subsequently, to the

return to community (Vuolo & Kruttschnitt, 2008). The correctional officer,

who represents “one of the main actors of the penal system” (Vuolo &

Kruttschnitt, 2008, p. 309) finds himself or herself having to constantly learn

and adapt in a workplace, i.e. the prison setting, that is also in continual

change (Dial, 2010).

Burnout in the Context of the Correctional Officer

Organizational Factors

In the penitentiary context, the authors identified multiple factors that can

determine the development of burnout syndrome in correctional officers.

Baudino (2014) has emphasized that the physical working environment is

decisive for assessing the stress levels inherent in the prison context. The

physical environment can negatively affect workers’ concentration and per-

formance and cause “sick building syndrome”—buildings and structures that