IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/crimin/v61y2021i4p1026-1043..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Working with Incarcerated Youth: Emotional Labour and Moral Wages

Author

Listed:
  • Kelsea Perry
  • Rosemary Ricciardelli

Abstract

Prisons are increasingly recognized as emotional places, especially for frontline staff. Though sociological accounts of emotional labour in prisons acknowledges the potential for negative outcomes (e.g. burnout), little scholarly attention has investigated the potential for positive outcomes, particularly opportunities for staff to earn moral wages. This article explores the emotional labour undertaken by correctional officers (COs) working with incarcerated youth in Canadian provincial prisons. Utilizing interviews with 40 COs, we unpack the patterned interactions characteristic of frontline work that call for emotional labour by prison staff, and its outcomes. Our results show that staff are aware of the emotional labour expected of them on the frontline, where opportunities to earn moral wages are contextualized by structural limitations inherent to the carceral environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Kelsea Perry & Rosemary Ricciardelli, 2021. "Working with Incarcerated Youth: Emotional Labour and Moral Wages," The British Journal of Criminology, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, vol. 61(4), pages 1026-1043.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:crimin:v:61:y:2021:i:4:p:1026-1043.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/bjc/azaa107
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:crimin:v:61:y:2021:i:4:p:1026-1043.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/bjc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.