Work in Long-Term Restrictive Housing and Prison Personnel Perceptions of the Humanity of People Who Are Incarcerated

• Author: Daniel P. Mears,Joshua C. Cochran,Vivian Aranda-Hughes,Jennifer M. Brown
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00938548221104980
• Published date: 01 October 2022
• Date: 01 October 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2022, Vol. 49, No. 10, October 2022, 1516 –1535.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548221104980

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions

© 2022 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

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WORK IN LONG-TERM RESTRICTIVE HOUSING

AND PRISON PERSONNEL PERCEPTIONS OF

THE HUMANITY OF PEOPLE WHO ARE

INCARCERATED

DANIEL P. MEARS

Florida State University

JOSHUA C. COCHRAN

University of Cincinnati

VIVIAN ARANDA-HUGHES

JENNIFER M. BROWN

Florida State University

The punitive era in the United States and other countries has included reliance on long-term restrictive housing (LTRH)—

consisting of solitary confinement with few privileges—as a means of managing violent and disruptive individuals in prison.

We examine how work in such housing may influence how personnel, including officers and staff, view individuals in prison

and assess two hypotheses. First, those who work in LTRH will be more likely to hold a dehumanized view of these indi-

viduals. Second, the theoretical mechanisms through which such a view may arise involve brutalization, organizational

context and culture, role conflict and distancing, and empathy fatigue. We assess these hypotheses using a mixed-methods

study, analyzing data from a large-scale prison personnel survey (n = 9,656) and qualitative focus group and interview data

(n = 144). Implications of the study’s findings for theory and research on restrictive housing, corrections, and the punitive

era are discussed.

Keywords: correctional officers; correctional staff; corrections; incarceration; perceptions

The punitive era in criminal justice in the United States and other countries introduced

many get-tough responses to crime, including changes in sentencing and corrections

(Garland, 2013; Spohn & Brennan, 2020). Prison systems, for example, have shifted toward

a more punishment-oriented approach (Phelps, 2011; Wooldredge & Smith, 2018). Research

has identified the impacts of the broader punitive turn on families and communities (Beckett

*Vivian Aranda-Hughes is now affiliated to University of Colorado-Denver.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: This project was supported by Grant No. 2016-IJ-CX-0014 awarded by the National

Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view in this document are

those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of

Justice or of the prison system from which the data for the study came. We thank the editors and anonymous

reviewers for guidance in strengthening the paper. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed

to Daniel P. Mears, College of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Florida State University, 112 South Copeland

Street, Eppes Hall, Tallahassee, FL 32306; e-mail: dmears@fsu.edu.

1104980CJBXXX10.1177/00938548221104980Criminal Justice and BehaviorMears et al. / Work in Long-Term Restrictive Housing

research-article2022

Mears et al. / WORK IN LONG-TERM RESTRICTIVE HOUSING 1517

& Herbert, 2010; Clear & Frost, 2014; Huebner & Frost, 2019; Kelly, 2014; Travis et al.,

2014). Less attention, though, has been given to the effects of get-tough correctional system

practices on personnel, including officers and staff, and how they view people who are

incarcerated.

In this article, we focus on one of the most punitive shifts in correctional policy in recent

decades—the use of long-term restrictive housing (LTRH) as a means of managing indi-

viduals deemed to be especially violent and disruptive. LTRH involves isolation alone in a

cell for many months, with only an hour or two of possible out-of-cell time each day, little

contact with personnel, and few privileges (Garcia, 2016; Labrecque, Campbell, et al.,

2021; Mears et al., 2019). To illuminate the potential impacts of work in this housing on

personnel views of people who are incarcerated, we draw on several lines of research to

develop two hypotheses: (1) Those who work in LTRH will be more likely to hold a dehu-

manized view of the incarcerated and (2) the theoretical mechanisms through which such a

view may arise involve brutalization, organizational context and culture, role conflict and

distancing, and empathy fatigue. We then assess these hypotheses using a mixed-methods

study, analyzing data from a large-scale prison personnel survey (n = 9,656) and qualitative

focus group and interview data (n = 144).

BACKGROUND

THE PUNITIVE ERA IN CORRECTIONS AND THE EMERGENCE OF LTRH

In the 1980s, state and federal policies began shifting toward sentencing laws that man-

dated longer sentences and that, more generally, promoted a more retributive-oriented

approach. The changes included a greater emphasis on increased punishment, control-

oriented probation, imposition of community notification registries, restrictions on voting

rights and housing support, and more (Beckett & Herbert, 2010; Garland, 2013; Mears,

2017; Sherry, 2020). They also included a move toward not only greater use of incarceration

but also more punitive, less rehabilitative prison conditions (Phelps, 2011).

One prominent example of this change in prisons can be seen in the rise of LTRH as a

policy for managing individuals thought to be otherwise unmanageable or the “worst of the

worst” (King, 2018). Sometimes termed supermax incarceration, this housing entails solitary

confinement in a cell for all but an hour or two a day for months or years (Labrecque,

Campbell, et al., 2021; Mears & Watson, 2006; Naday et al., 2008). The purpose of LTRH is

to control individuals deemed to be too violent and disruptive to be managed any other way.

In the past, such individuals generally were managed by dispersing them across the

prison system. During the punitive era, states increasingly turned to a concentration

approach. They housed these individuals in facilities that operated on a perpetual lockdown

mode centering on isolation, limited to no time out of cell, and other restrictions (Shalev,

2009). Adopted not only in the United States but also in many other countries (Ross, 2013),

this approach resembled the solitary confinement used in the 1800s that subsequently was

condemned as inhumane (Rubin & Reiter, 2018). LTRH is similar to other types of restric-

tive housing in some respects, such as more time in a cell and limited privileges. For exam-

ple, disciplinary confinement (DC) is a type of restrictive housing, which generally entails

stays of a few days or weeks, can include cellmates, and allows for more privileges (Shalev,

2009). LTRH differs in its focus on managing individuals who are violent and disruptive,

reliance on solitary confinement, longer durations of such confinement, and greater restric-

tions on movement and privileges (Mears et al., 2019).