La hagiografía

THE IMPORTANCE OF UNDERSTANDING CORRECTIONAL OFFICER RISK PERCEPTIONS

From the literature discussed thus far, it is evident that human life is marked by a preoccupation with the various dangers and risks that surround us. Whether we are concerned with incoming hurricanes, work-related lawsuits, victimization or death, much of our behavior is dictated by a desire to control our environments and minimize life‘s uncertainties (O‘Malley, 1992). Partly as a result of these observations, various risk management agencies and measures have been introduced such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, resource officers within our public and private schools and offender classification systems (Golding, 1992). Although these departments and risk-reduction techniques are intended to improve the safety and overall welfare of the wider society, scholars within different disciplines have outlined some of their limitations. That said, this section will provide an overview of some of the literature examining how risks are viewed and controlled within several disciplines, including criminology and corrections more specifically.

Environmental and Public Health

Within the fields of environmental and public health, scholars have developed typologies of the various dangers and risks people face and have further referenced the limitations of these field‘s attempts to protect humans from life‘s various threats. Duan (2005), for example, examined the environmental risk perceptions held by a sample of

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American and Chinese university students. Social variables such as trust and value in risk management agencies were found to correlate highly with the risk perceptions of each sample. The Chinese sample, moreover, was found to be comparatively more concerned by the risks associated with ozone depletion, carbon monoxide emissions and air

pollution. Both samples indicated that their respective governments were failing to take necessary precautions to protect their citizens from the multitude of environmental dangers threatening humanity. In public health, Lee (2007) found amongst a sample of Critical Care Nurses that the biggest risk factors for on-the-job injuries were greater job strain, higher physical workload indexes, more frequent patient handling and lack of social support from superiors. Poor work environments, moreover, were found to significantly predict work-related musculoskeletal injuries. The Critical Care Nurses, noted Lee (2007), stated that greater risk-reduction measures had to be taken by hospital administrators in order to protect these nurses.

Veronesi (2008) found environmental risk factors such as air pollution and transmission of viruses to significantly predict public health concerns like cancer, stroke, emphysema, chronic bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She also found that these risks and risk factors adversely affected the lives of those inflicted with these diseases, with some reporting divorce, mental breakdowns and losses of job and money. Finally, Ramos (2005) found that amongst public health ‗experts‘, there is very little agreement concerning how asthma-related risk factors are conceptualized and operationalized. She indicates that this lack of methodological consensus may thwart public health‘s ability to remedy this illness.

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Criminology and Corrections

Within the field of criminology, there has been a long history of identifying salient criminogenic risk factors. Criminological theories regard dangers such as socially disorganized communities (Shaw & McKay, 1969), attenuations in informal social control mechanisms (Hirschi, 1969), deviant models of learning (Akers, 1985),

ineffective parenting and low levels of self-control (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1991) as the most significant predictors of such outcomes as broken families and crime. Some of this literature has also found risk factors such as smoking, truancy and mental instability to be positively associated with the risks of criminal involvement (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1991). However, research shows that these risk factors and dangers are rarely ever the only explanatory agents of criminal behavior (Thornberry, 1986). Much like the limitations of public and environmental health risk assessments, the criminal justice literature has also failed to fully explain the risks associated with aberrant conduct. This has led to growing concern over this field‘s inability to predict and control the risk factors associated with crime.

Even within the field of corrections, more specifically, there has always been a concern for rehabilitating offenders, which at times meant identifying variables correlated with their unlawful conduct (Craig, 2005). In fact, and as previously referenced (see page 3), one of the original purposes of prisons was to rehabilitate law violators through solitary confinement and spiritual reformation. Since it was originally believed that anti- social behavior emanated from moral deviations, such responses were thought to be central to resolving issues of crime (Craig, 2005). This, in part, meant that prisons at the time were concerned with individual inmates and that strategies were being developed to

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thwart their future criminality. However, several correctional scholars have noted that the American penal philosophy has undergone a significant change in recent decades.

Whereas prisons were originally concerned with the successful treatment and

rehabilitation of every individual offender through such practices as cognitive behavioral therapy, incapacitation and community-based corrections (Craig, 2005), today, a ‗new penology‘ (Feeley & Simon, 1992) has emerged. This new penology focuses on:

Actuarial considerations of aggregates…It facilitates development of a vision or model of a new type of criminal process that embraces increased reliance on imprisonment and that merges concerns for surveillance and custody…It shifts away from a concern with punishing individuals to managing aggregates of dangerous groups (Feeley & Simon, 1992, abstract).

Feeley and Simon (1992) further emphasize that new penology-based

correctional practices no longer are concerned with the moral incorrectness of crime and with techniques that can be used to uncover correlates of delinquent behavior. Instead, through aggregate-based probabilistic calculations of populations, responses to wayward conduct are now more managerial than resolution-based in nature. The new penology, additionally, is more concerned with fiscal considerations in that any strategies

introduced to manage crime are geared towards saving taxpayer monies. Furthermore, a number of authors have also noted that under the new penology, how success is

determined within the criminal justice system has been radically altered (Feeley & Simon, 1992; Garland, 1996; Craig, 2005). From where officials were previously concerned with eliminating crime and using this as the yardstick of success, the new penology:

Reshapes one‘s understanding of the functions of the penal sanction…By emphasizing…any…correctional program in terms of aggregate control and system management rather than individual success and failure, the

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new penology lowers one‘s expectations about the criminal sanction…Further…its goal is not to eliminate crime but to make it tolerable through systematic coordination (Feeley & Simon, 1992, p. 455). Another change brought about by the new penology is the practice of assessing offenders according to their level of risk, which often is based upon either

professional/judgmental or actuarial methodologies. From a professional judgmental standpoint, parole boards, judges, academics and other ‗experts‘ within the field of offender risk management and assessment use risk factors such as one‘s socio-economic status, level of intelligence, prior criminal history and a host of other variables to

determine what program/response is most suitable to the successful management of the offender (Austin, 2004). Typically these individuals hold graduate level degrees or are professionals within the criminal justice field and are deemed capable of assessing human behavior. In addition, there are numerous actuarially-based risk assessment instruments including the Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R); the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS); the Client Management Classification (CMC); the Risk of Reconviction Scale and Criminogenic Needs Inventory; the Community Risk/Needs Management Scale (CRNMS) and Case Needs Identification and Analysis (CNIA); the Rapid Risk Assessment for Sexual Offense Recidivism (RRASOR); and finally, STATIC-99 and Sexual Violence Risk-20 (Austin, 2004).

Through a series of questionnaires investigating further into offender backgrounds and characteristics and a series of tests designed to assess the level of risk of each

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(mutable) variables associated with offender criminality7. Based on the level of risk ascribed to the offender, partially according to the information obtained through these assessments, appropriate programs and classifications are then designated for the individual. Classifications can be either external (placing prisoners within the general population at a certain custody level) or internal (intra-facility decisions about where and with what other prisoners an offender will be placed within prison) in nature (Austin, 2004).

Despite extant literature attributing success to these various risk assessment strategies (Gendreau, Little & Coggin, 1996; Austin, 2004), a growing body of literature highlights several of their limitations (Austin, 2004; Sjostedt & Langstrom, 2001; Gendreau, Coggin & Law, 1997). Specifically, Austin (2004) references how:

All risk assessment systems, whether they rely on professional judgment, actuarial scoring systems or a combination of the two, are subject to error. Factors that may lead to such errors include unpredictable situational or environmental factors (e.g., chance meetings between rival gang members), and the inherent difficulty in predicting events with a low frequency of occurrence such as prison escapes, suicides and homicides (p. 7).

Aside from Austin (2004), other authors add that several experts within correctional risk management not only restrict the scope of risks within prison by narrowly focusing on inmates alone, but that many risk assessment instruments are both unethical and disproportionately target minorities (Floud, 1982; Blackmore & Welsh, 1983; Pratt, 1993). Finally, it has even been indicated that professional judgment is ―by far the least accurate risk assessment method…because such judgments are no more than gut reactions that can vary from expert to expert‖ (Austin, 2004, p. 8).

7_{Examples of static predictors of risk include age at first arrest, seriousness of current offense and history}

of violent felony convictions, while dynamic risk predictors include current employment status, marital status, age and any other situational variable that can change rapidly (Austin, 2004).

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Other authors have offered additional remarks on the deficiencies of judgmental and actuarial risk assessments. Clear & Berry (1983), for instance, state that:

Violence is vastly over-predicted whether simple behavioral indicators are used or sophisticated multivariate analyses are employed, and whether psychological tests are administered or thorough psychiatric examinations are performed (p. 343).

Glaser (1985) claims that ―officials that grant or deny liberty seldom receive systematic feedback on their wisdom‖ and further adds that academics and ―risk judgment experts routinely fail to predict the likelihood of recidivism because they use erroneous predictor variables‖ (p. 440). Finally, Marzano et al. (2009) added to these sentiments after having found that ―like 70% of prisoners who take their own lives in custody…CD (the

offender)…had not been deemed ‗at-risk‘ of suicide at the time of his attempt‖ (p. 153). Given the danger most criminals pose to society, it is important to understand the risk factors associated with their criminality. As some of this literature demonstrates, unfortunately, even experts within the field of risk assessment mistake the likelihood of offender recidivism, and other risks. This has been partially explained by the fact that most correctional administrators and academics do not interact in face-to-face manners with offenders (Austin, 2004; Garcia, 2008; Gonsalves et al. 2012). They do not know their life stories, they are unaware of their behavioral characteristics, and they frequently rely on secondary data to make their risk judgments and predictions about the dangers within prisons. Clearly this is an insufficient way of assessing prison-based risk.

As the ―front line bureaucrats‖ (Lipsky, 2010) of the prison, corrections officers have intimate and personal contact with offenders and inside knowledge regarding the on-goings within penal institutions. Their close contact affords them opportunities to understand the complexities of offenders and even make accurate assessments regarding

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their behavior. Gonsalves et al. (2012), in fact, found correctional officials to be correct 97.4 % of time when making predictions of which offenders would commit sexual perpetrations, and when assessing the most important factors predicting this outcome. Even more, correctional officers properly classified 99.1% of offenders into the

categories of high, medium and low risk for both sexual perpetration and victimization. Since officers of the penal system face perils such as victimization, disease, harassment and liability law-suits (Lambert et al. 2009), it is important to minimize the risks

associated with these dangers and accurately assess the behavior of criminals. Given their unique place within the prison, correctional officers are in a position to provide insightful information concerning not only the risks most offenders pose, but the risks the collective prison environment poses as well. By soliciting direct information regarding the risk perceptions held by a sample of correctional guards, researchers and policy-makers can be in a better position to not only understand the perils that accompany prison work, but even guide in the formation of prison-based risk management policies.

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