The Floating Signifier of “Radicalization”: Correctional Officers’ Perceptions of Prison Radicalization

Abstract

The number of people incarcerated for extremist actions has grown over the past decades. The resulting prospect of prison radicalization has contributed to widespread risk responsibilitization among prison staff. Low-level correctional officers now perceive themselves as being directly responsible for detecting radicalization on their units. Consequently, radicalization has become a meaningful topic for prison staff, one which shapes their daily actions and perceptions. However, officers’ understandings of radicalization may not conform with accepted definitions. Through 131 semistructured interviews with Canadian correctional officers, we demonstrate how radicalization functions as a floating signifier in prison, influencing officer thought and behavior in meaningful ways while eluding easy definition. Officers redefine radicalization to fit interpretive frames around religion and race, gang membership, and mental health, irrespective of whether stereotypical extremists exist in a given prison. We demonstrate how radicalization, when operating as a floating signifier, can significantly influence officers’ perceptions and front-line prison operations.

“That shit doesn't fly”: Subcultural constraints on prison radicalization

“…Although we did not directly ask participants about informing, 15 percent of our 148 pertinent participants openly volunteered that they would tell officers about suspected radicals. Officers were then expected to directly control that individual's behavior or transfer them to a different unit (Schultz et al., 2020, 2021a). Evan, a White man, provided an example of one such situation: Evan : There's ISIS guys in [one unit] that one time, but they got them off the unit as soon as people found out about it.…”

“…Radicalization is a widely defined concept that seems to be understood differently depending on the institutional setting (Onursal & Kirkpatrick, 2019; Schultz et al., 2021a). Many researchers and practitioners now refer to radicalization as a component of ideologically motivated violent extremism (IMVE).…”

Correctional officers and the use of force as an organizational behavior

“…I conducted these interviews as part of a larger research team, consisting of two principal investigators and between four and six research assistants (see Bucerius et al., 2023; Schultz et al., 2021). Our research agreement granted us access to each institution for 2 to 4 weeks.…”

La prevención de la radicalización violenta de corte yihadista en la Unión Europea

“…En este contexto, aunque las primeras medidas para hacer frente a la radicalización violenta se adoptaron desde una perspectiva reactiva -incrementando la vigilancia fronteriza, la cooperación policial y judicial, y adaptando y armonizando los códigos penales y las leyes especiales contra el terrorismo-4 , a las que se añadieron una serie de medidas de carácter 3 Ejemplo de ello lo encontramos en Khalid Masood, autor del ataque frente al Parlamento en Londres en 2017, radicalizado durante sus varias estancias en prisión. No obstante, otros autores mantienen que la excesiva atención sobre las posibilidades de radicalización en prisiones puede inducir a un aumento de las sospechas sobre el colectivo carcelario musulmán y provocar efectos contrarios a los deseados (Chantraine y Scheer, 2021), (Schultz et al, 2021). 4 La Unión Europea contaba desde 2005 con una Estrategia de Lucha contra el Terrorismo, que se revisó en junio de 2014 a la luz de fenómenos nuevos, como el terrorismo en solitario, los combatientes extranjeros y el uso de las redes sociales por parte de los terroristas para difundir su propaganda (Estrategia revisada de la Unión Europea para luchar contra la radicalización y la captación de terroristas, Bruselas, 19 de mayo de 2014, https://bit.ly/3Db1D6t).…”