‘I Wouldn’t Ask You to Do Something I Wouldn’t Do Myself’: Prison Managers and Prison Officer Culture

Abstract

Criminal justice organisations, including prisons (Arnold et al., 2007; Crawley and Crawley, 2008) and the police (Loftus, 2011), have often been described as having distinct occupational cultures. These observations are usually based upon studies of front-line staff such as prison officers and police constables but they leave open the question of how far such cultures permeate the whole organisation, including managers, or whether these are contained within particular groups. This chapter is concerned with opening up this issue and exploring the relationship between prison management and prison officer culture.