In jails and prisons across the United States, one of the most significant and least discussed factors in the behavior of incarcerated people is the conduct of correctional officers. When staff lead with hostility, contempt, and dehumanization, the documented consequences include higher rates of violence, more disciplinary infractions, worse mental health outcomes, and reduced prospects for successful reentry. When staff are trained in trauma-informed care and respectful communication, the documented outcomes reverse. The research is consistent: correctional culture shapes incarcerated behavior — and correctional culture is something that can be changed.
The Power Dynamic Inside the Walls
Correctional officers hold immense power over incarcerated people. They control access to food, recreation, visitation, education programs, and basic hygiene products. This power can be exercised to foster stability and dignity — or it can be weaponized to instill fear, humiliation, and resentment. The distinction between those two uses of the same authority produces dramatically different outcomes, and the research documenting those outcomes is both consistent and largely absent from mainstream criminal justice discourse.
Many correctional facilities have normalized cultures of aggression and contempt. Staff may refer to people in custody as “inmates” or “bodies” rather than by name. They may mock, ignore, or antagonize those under their supervision. Over time, these practices create environments of institutional hostility in which the stated goal of rehabilitation is structurally impossible — because the daily conditions of confinement are actively working against it.
The Psychology of Dehumanization
Social science research is consistent on what dehumanization produces. When people are treated as subhuman consistently and without recourse, they tend to internalize and mirror that treatment. The power dynamics created by confinement make this effect more pronounced rather than less — people in custody have no ability to leave, to report to a different supervisor, or to insulate themselves from the institutional culture in which they are held.
The original article cites the Stanford Prison Experiment (1971) as illustrating how quickly power imbalances produce cruelty in confined environments. That study’s findings are widely recognized, but its methodology has also been the subject of significant academic critique — including evidence that role behaviors were coached rather than spontaneous. The broader research literature on correctional environments, including PMC-published peer-reviewed studies on staff attitudes and incarcerated behavior, provides more methodologically robust support for the documented relationship between dehumanizing institutional cultures and adverse outcomes. The general principle — that power imbalances in confined environments can produce rapid behavioral deterioration — is well-supported across the literature, even as the specific study’s methodology remains contested.
PMC-published research documents that harsh staff attitudes contribute to increased incidents of violence and rule violations in correctional facilities. The relationship is not incidental — staff culture is a significant predictor of facility safety outcomes, independent of the characteristics of the incarcerated population.
Facilities where officers received training in trauma-informed care and respectful communication showed lower rates of misconduct and improved mental health outcomes for both staff and residents. The bidirectional benefit — better outcomes for both groups — is a consistent finding across the research literature, and is a significant argument for institutional investment in dignity-centered training.
Correctional officers working in high-conflict, disrespectful environments have higher rates of PTSD, depression, and burnout compared to officers in facilities with healthier institutional cultures. Prison Policy Institute research on traumatic exposure in correctional work documents that dehumanization is a workplace hazard as well as a humanitarian problem — the costs fall on staff as well as on the people they supervise.
The Alternative: Leading with Dignity
The evidence for a dignity-centered approach to corrections is not purely theoretical. Norway’s prison system — frequently cited as among the most humane — requires officers to complete extensive training in communication, conflict resolution, and rehabilitation. Officers eat meals with residents, address them by name, and actively participate in preparing them for reentry into society. The results are significantly lower rates of both violence and recidivism compared to systems organized around control, punishment, and containment.
In the United States, Michigan’s IGNITE program provides a closer-to-home data point. Research on the program found that custody officers who interact regularly with IGNITE participants are twice as likely as officers without such interaction to view educational programming for incarcerated individuals as worthwhile. The finding suggests that contact with rehabilitative programming changes staff attitudes — and that those changed attitudes create conditions more conducive to the outcomes the system claims to pursue.
Widespread change in correctional culture requires more than pilot programs. It requires rethinking how correctional officers are recruited, trained, supervised, and supported. Training in trauma-informed care, communication, and conflict resolution must be a baseline professional requirement rather than an optional program. Leadership at the facility level must model and enforce dignity-centered norms — cultures of contempt persist where leadership tolerates or rewards them. And the wellbeing of correctional staff must be treated as a legitimate institutional priority, not as a secondary concern to custody and control.
Correctional officers are not just guards. They are the daily human environment in which incarcerated people spend years of their lives. If the goal of incarceration is to produce people who can return to society as stable, accountable citizens, the daily environment of confinement must reflect those values rather than contradict them. A system cannot punish someone into becoming a better person. But it can model — or fail to model — what better looks like.
Sources
Rita Williams, Dignity vs. Dehumanization: How Correctional Officers’ Attitudes Shape Incarcerated People’s Behavior, Clutch Justice (June 9, 2025), https://clutchjustice.com/2025/06/09/dignity-vs-dehumanization-how-correctional-officers-attitudes-shape-incarcerated-peoples-behavior/.
Williams, R. (2025, June 9). Dignity vs. dehumanization: How correctional officers’ attitudes shape incarcerated people’s behavior. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/2025/06/09/dignity-vs-dehumanization-how-correctional-officers-attitudes-shape-incarcerated-peoples-behavior/
Williams, Rita. “Dignity vs. Dehumanization: How Correctional Officers’ Attitudes Shape Incarcerated People’s Behavior.” Clutch Justice, 9 June 2025, clutchjustice.com/2025/06/09/dignity-vs-dehumanization-how-correctional-officers-attitudes-shape-incarcerated-peoples-behavior/.
Williams, Rita. “Dignity vs. Dehumanization: How Correctional Officers’ Attitudes Shape Incarcerated People’s Behavior.” Clutch Justice, June 9, 2025. https://clutchjustice.com/2025/06/09/dignity-vs-dehumanization-how-correctional-officers-attitudes-shape-incarcerated-peoples-behavior/.
