IntroductionKnowledge about the factors that contribute to the correctional officer’s (CO) mental health and well-being, or best practices for improving the mental health and well-being of COs, have been hampered by the dearth of rigorous longitudinal studies. In the current protocol, we share the approach used in the Canadian Correctional Workers’ Well-being, Organizations, Roles and Knowledge study (CCWORK), designed to investigate several determinants of health and well-being among COs working in Canada’s federal prison system.Methods and analysisCCWORK is a multiyear longitudinal cohort design (2018–2023, with a 5-year renewal) to study 500 COs working in 43 Canadian federal prisons. We use quantitative and qualitative data collection instruments (ie, surveys, interviews and clinical assessments) to assess participants’ mental health, correctional work experiences, correctional training experiences, views and perceptions of prison and prisoners, and career aspirations. Our baseline instruments comprise two surveys, one interview and a clinical assessment, which we administer when participants are still recruits in training. Our follow-up instruments refer to a survey, an interview and a clinical assessment, which are conducted yearly when participants have become COs, that is, in annual ‘waves’.Ethics and disseminationCCWORK has received approval from the Research Ethics Board of the Memorial University of Newfoundland (File No. 20190481). Participation is voluntary, and we will keep all responses confidential. We will disseminate our research findings through presentations, meetings and publications (e.g., journal articles and reports). Among CCWORK’s expected scientific contributions, we highlight a detailed view of the operational, organizational and environmental stressors impacting CO mental health and well-being, and recommendations to prison administrators for improving CO well-being.

No abstract

Objective: Correctional work involves exposures to correctional-specific potentially psychologically traumatic events (PPTEs); however, the frequency and impact of such PPTEs on the mental health of correctional workers remain unclear. We analyzed the prevalence and frequency of 13 different occupationalspecific PPTE exposures among correctional workers (n = 980; 50.7% female) and estimated associations with mental health symptoms. Method: The survey data used are from the Provincial Ontario Correctional Worker Mental Health Prevalence Study in Canada. Cross-tabulations, Chi-square tests, ANOVAs, and logistic regression are used to examine the following: (a) the distribution of correctional-specific PPTEs across correctional worker occupational categories; (b) the frequencies of correctional-specific PPTE exposures; and (c) the association between correctional-specific PPTEs and mental disorders. Population-attributable fractions (PAFs) are used to estimate the proportion of mental disorders that may be attributable to PPTE exposures. Results: Most correctional workers reported exposures to most types of PPTEs, including being directly threatened or subject to abusive language (94.6%), de-escalating a prison/client in mental health crisis (92.2%), and using force or suit up and resort to "use of force" in a nontraining situation (70.6%). The mean number of lifetime PPTE exposures was 7.79 (SD = 3.33). There were statistically significant differences in PPTE exposure patterns across correctional worker categories. PPTEs were positively associated with mental disorder symptoms for all participants. PAFs indicated that mental disorders among correctional workers could reduce by 66%-80% with the elimination of all PPTEs among correctional workers. Conclusions: Eliminating PPTE exposures is unlikely in the correctional environment; nevertheless, the results indicate that mitigating PPTEs may drastically improve the mental health of correctional workers. Clinical Impact StatementCorrectional workers experience correctional-specific PPTEs at least 10 times more frequently than the general population, placing them at increased risk for several different mental health disorders. There is evidence of important variation in correctional-specific PPTE exposures across categories of correctional work, but all correctional workers reported high levels of correctional-specific PPTE exposures and should be equipped with supports, tools, and resources to effectively protect their mental health throughout their occupational activities. Responding to such experience with evidenced informed treatment practices is essential to help overcome the potential of compromised mental health.

Prisons are poorly ventilated confined spaces with limited physical distancing opportunities, making an environment conducive to the spread of infectious diseases. Based on empirical research with correctional officer recruits in Canada, we analyze the reasons and sources of fear, and the measures that recruits adopt to counter their fear of contagion. Our study marks an advance in the correctional work literature, which, to date, has tended to view perceived contagion risks as a workplace challenge that can be overcome with occupational skill and experience. In contrast with the existing literature, we present fear and perceived contagion risk as an “operational stress injury” that affects all correctional officers; a structural occupational health and safety problem that needs redressing from the labor policy perspective.

When news media in the UK and US discuss China’s surveillance networks, it is often to imply that the Chinese government is creating a “techno-authoritarian state” to track and monitor its citizens. News outlets, however, are missing a larger point. The specific problem with China’s surveillance apparatus is not that it is technologically “totalizing” and “intrusive,” but that it relies on a newly digitized information platform that connects surveillance subjects to information about their households and family members, allowing the simultaneous identification and monitoring of everyone in each kinship network. Referred to as the Household Register or hukou, this platform is the backbone of China’s “surveillant assemblage” (Haggerty and Ericson 2000). Until the late 1990s when it was digitalized, hukou was an individually separate and distinct surveillance system that contained both general and detailed information about a household and its members. With digitalization, hukou became a platform that integrates different computer systems and databases. CCTV surveillance that involves facial recognition and Internet surveillance practices are connected to, and supported by, information from hukou. In the case of CCTV surveillance, cameras equipped with facial recognition features match the face of surveillance subjects with their ID and trace them back to their families. As for Internet surveillance, the connection between hukou and surveillance subjects happens via telephone number. Access to the Internet and social media platforms such as WeChat, SinaWeibo, and e-mail services requires a telephone number purchased with a government-issued ID card, which is connected to a household register and, therefore, the telephone card owner’s family. Chinese law enforcement’s ability to treat individual Internet users also as “collective units” represents the most distinctive feature of Chinese surveillance, an unlimited source of coercion for the Communist Party to reproduce itself as the ruling party.