The “Pains of Employment”? Connecting Air and Sound Quality to Correctional Officer Experiences of Health and Wellness in Prison Space

Introduction

Prisons are powerful and affecting places. Regardless of where on the scale between extreme punitiveness and progressive exceptionalism they exist, prisons are deliberate societal constructions designed and manifested in ways that enforce spatial restriction, securitization, and loss of liberty upon the persons incarcerated within them. In unpacking these intentions lies an inherent assumption that the lived experience of life within such spaces will take on various forms and practices. Such assumptions are widely accepted by prison researchers via the dominating work by Sykes (1958) on the “pains of imprisonment,” which documents the bodily-, symbolic-, and societal-impacts of time spent behind bars. Here, the oppressiveness of conditions and circumstances of incarceration is a recurring theme. ¹ Nevertheless, such work has influenced a wealth of emergent, and perhaps, varied ways of understanding the experience(s) of incarceration that create dialogue between these encounters and the physical manifestations of prison space. “In other words,” as Moran and Turner outline, “we have known for some time that prison is a highly stressful place; we are now beginning to understand the role that the built environment plays in producing that tension” (2019, p. 63). For example, there is a growing literature in criminology, carceral geography, architecture studies, and beyond, that seeks to explore prison architecture, its aesthetic components and/or its significance for human experience (see, e.g., Fransson et al., 2018; Karthaus et al., 2019; Moran, Turner, et al., 2016). In many cases, this wave of attention contradicts Sykes’ suggestions of a “painful” or “pain-filled” environment, instead intimating the potential for architecture to have positive, health-enabling (or, even, therapeutic) effect in the penal setting (Jewkes et al., 2020; Moran & Turner, 2019; Turner & Moran, 2019). Whatever the eventual outcome, such work posits an undeniable relationship between prison architecture and the lived experience of prison space, that is felt by those working and living in prisons.

Yet, despite these steady progressions in the attention to the constructions, components, and consequences of carceral space, the bulk of research still focuses on the experience of incarcerated persons. Such attention is, of course, unquestionably warranted. This population is, after all, the primary “target” for incarceration and comprises the individuals whose presence is the object of the laws and penal systems that thus accommodate them. They are the 24/7 occupants of these spaces and this commentary by no means trivializes this emphasis. However, in prioritizing the experience of incarcerated persons, it is often easy to neglect the other populations who are, arguably, equally deliberately intended for that space: prison staff, including correctional officers (COs). Given the basic mathematical calculation of the dominance of working hours in our waking lives, it is crucial to also offer research perspectives about other persons who spend the majority of their time in prison (if not behind prison bars). Beyond this, notwithstanding the recognition of hyper-technological facilities and Benthamian discourse on self-disciplining practice that create the redundancy of actual human beings (or the discrepancies created by penal systems with prisoner-dominant organization), prisons are generally unable to function without employees. Providing essential and non-essential services, COs are the direct connection between prisoners and the outside world; they are also responsible for ensuring the safety and security of the prison, incarcerated persons, staff, and the public (Griffin et al., 2012). In many respects, COs are also serving time—despite their technical freedoms—alongside the incarcerated persons in their legal care (Ricciardelli, 2019). Reflecting the key role of prison officers in enacting and embodying the moral quality of prison life (Liebling, 2011, p. 484), a diverse and extensive body of work has developed over recent decades to enhance understanding of a wide range of elements important to their conduct, attitudes and experiences, and other key aspects of their lives. Here, we learn much about the experience of COs in terms of their: gender (e.g., Boyd & Grant, 2005; Tait, 2008), ethnicity and attitudes to diversity (Bygnes, 2014; Singh & Fossi, 2008), frequent prior-military experience (e.g., Moran & Turner, 2022; Turner & Moran, 2023), work in the public and private sectors (e.g., McLean & Liebling, 2008), recruitment and assessment (e.g., McHugh et al., 2008; Morrison & Maycock, 2021), training and development (e.g., Arnold, 2008; Bolger & Bennett, 2008), job satisfaction (e.g., Boateng & Hsieh, 2019), unionization (e.g., Page, 2011), and social world (e.g., Crewe, 2008). Dedicated and detailed studies also cover their concerns about infection at work (e.g., Dillon & Allwright, 2005), emotion and emotional labor (Crawley, 2004; Humblet, 2020; Nylander et al., 2011), experience of deaths in custody (e.g., Barry, 2017), work–life balance and sickness absence (e.g., Kinman et al., 2017), and other sources of work-related stress (e.g., Bell et al., 2019; Steiner & Wooldredge, 2015). Despite such critical interventions, work that interrogates the potential link between these experiences and the carceral space itself is limited

In this article, we offer such perspectives. Taking the lead from existing literature that focuses on various architectural components within prison space and extending it to the specific experiences of custodial staff, we draw upon Canadian federal COs’ experiences from a larger longitudinal study on CO mental health and well-being (Ricciardelli, Andres, et al., 2021) to interrogate how health and wellness are influenced by two carceral conditions: sound quality and air quality in prison space. In this sense, we place air and sound quality as physical components of the carceral space, both being central to working and living in prisons and linked to physical conditions.

Drawing lightly from literature in sensory criminology and carceral geography, we first demonstrate how carceral spaces can exist as health-imposing places and review literature on how prison air quality and sound quality affect health and wellness. Following a note on our methodological approach, we present empirical data that explore the links between air, sound, health, and wellness reported by COs in Canada. In doing so, we reveal air quality and sound quality as both a product of the physical infrastructure of prison and contingent upon CO perceptions of prisoners in that space. We conclude, pondering the impact of this understanding upon potential avenues for improving health and wellness for custodial staff (and prisoners). ²

A Sense of Prison Space

A variety of wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary, and multi-national research work now attends to the significance of carceral space (Moran, 2016), recognizing the prison landscape as more than simply a container of prison life. Such spatial orientations are, perhaps, most clear-cut in the work of carceral geographers, a sub-discipline of human geography informed by and in dialogue with criminology, which shares elements of a criminological approach regarding how confinement in space is experienced. ³ In such concern, prisons are recognized as everyday spaces in which people spend a significant proportion of their lives and as expressions of political-economic imperatives that code them with symbols and reference points of socio-political and cultural narratives (Moran, Jewkes, et al., 2016). Both iterations highlight a significant relationship between materiality and affect; in other words, the physical prison landscape and the experience(s) of it. Previous prison research has explored how carceral spaces are filled with a cacophony of sounds, a potent concoction of smells, and brimming with competing emotions (Crewe et al., 2014; Herrity et al., 2021). Such work is underscored by the recognition that the component characteristics of a place or building (e.g., lighting, colors, temperature, materials, movement, and use of space) intersect with the human body: prison alerts the senses. Such sensory engagement can, as this article develops through the interrogation of air and sound quality, have a variety of bodily reactions. Although almost all reactions engender physical responses, some are involuntary and even unobserved, whereas others are highly consequential of social constructions around expectations of good/poor health and positive/negative wellness. Although offering broader commentary as necessary, this literature review deliberately prioritizes discussion relevant to air and sound quality, which emerged from our empirical data via the inductive-coding approach (see Method section).

As McClanahan and South (2020, p. 5) contend, ample evidence supports the senses “as the essential site of knowledge production.” Sensory information receives meaning through a complex system of interpretations, encounters, and relations. Olfactory, tactile, auditory, gustatory and visual data, as they arrive in our internal affective spaces, are “creations of an incalculable range of factors that include the conditions of their production, the historical context of that production and dissemination, and the cultural dynamics of their intake or consumption” (McClanahan & South, 2020, p. 8). Senses interact, such that “the way we see the world may be visual, but this is not in isolation from other sensory cues and conditions” (McClanahan & South, 2020, p. 4). Academic attention to the senses is wide-ranging. In anthropology, although too broad to fully exemplify, research includes attention to smell, taste, touch, and other non-visual sensory inputs. ⁴ Taking a different direction, cultural geography, which has become more widely sensorial, has produced influential and compelling work on “soundscapes” (Schafer, 1993; Smith, 1994; Waterman, 2000) as well as the permeability of and relations between the various senses.

While the heritage and legitimacy of this sensorial conversation in other disciplines have blossomed, the sensorial seed has only recently been planted in studies of crime and carcerality (Herrity et al., 2021; McClanahan & South, 2020). Nevertheless, emergent work is unequivocally multi-sensory (so to speak), including sense of hearing (via the study of the sonic experiences of incarceration and detention; Hemsworth, 2016; Herrity, 2020; Rice, 2016; Russell & Carlton, 2020); sense of smell (e.g., the politics and the management of air; Martin, 2021); sense of vision (e.g., the view from prison cells Turner et al., 2020); sense of touch (e.g., bodily impacts of water infrastructure in carceral spaces; Jewkes et al., 2020; Turner & Moran, 2019); sense of taste (e.g., Ugelvik, 2011; Vanhouche, 2022); as well as their conglomerate effect as “atmosphere(s) of incarceration” (Turner et al., 2022). Overall, there are efforts “to invigorate a conversation about the role of sensory experience in the production of knowledge” of carceral environments (Herrity et al., 2021, p. xxi).

In this article, we focus on two sensory engagements with the prison environment: sense of smell (through reflection on air quality) and sense of hearing (via sound quality). These facets are not, thus far, without academic attention. There is literature that attends specifically to the relationship between particular stimuli and physical health. For example, evidence suggests that prison air quality can negatively affect respiratory systems for those living behind prison walls. Moxey-Adderley et al. (2016, p. 163) found, in their examination of Bahamian prison conditions and prisoner health, that “prisoners … housed in overcrowded, inadequately ventilated cells … repeatedly breathe stale, contaminated air. The lack of fresh air in the enclosed environment is a potential source of infection.” For example, Carbonara et al.'s (2005) study in nine prisons in Italy reiterated how prison spaces represent a crucial setting for tuberculosis (TB)—a disease spread through the inhalation of expelled Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria. Similarly, O’Grady et al. (2011) contend that poor prison living conditions, mass incarceration, and inadequate ventilation, in such congregate settings, promote the transmission of TB between prisoners. Fazel and Baillargeon (2011) also found that respiratory infections are among the common infections that are disproportionately clustered among prisoners compared to the general population. Overcrowded prisons, in part due to double-bunking and lack of physical distancing opportunities, represent a risk of contagion in environments that are confined. Incarcerated persons housed in an overcrowded environment are at a higher risk of contracting upper respiratory tract infections associated with exposure to airborne pathogens such as pneumonia, influenza, and TB and, as was most recently and acutely recognized, the COVID-19 pandemic is evidence of this risk.

In a similar vein, prison sound quality has been shown to impact sense of hearing. For example, a study conducted by Jacobson et al. (1989, p. 178), reported a “high incidence of hearing loss in the prison population”. In their case, more than 29% of the 34 adult prisoners tested for hearing disorders had some degree of hearing impairment. In doing so, the authors suggest their results corroborated McRandle and Goldstein’s (1986) study, where more than 38% of the 73 adult prisoner participants failed at least one audiometric screening. While the authors caution against generalizability to non-institutionalized populations, they contend the extent of screening failure “is higher than what might be predicted from reports of hearing loss among non-institutionalized populations” (Jacobson et al., 1989, p. 147). They suggest that “multiple talkers, […] high ambient noise levels in prisons with their high ceilings and reverberant hard-wall surfaces” may make it difficult for prisoners’ auditory ability to be sustained over time (Jacobson et al., 1989, p. 152). Existing literature also appears to indicate that these patterns are exacerbated among particular prison populations. Vanderpoll and Howard (2012) studied the hearing loss in Indigenous prisoners within the Darwin Correctional Centre, Australia. They found that 94% of prisoners have significant hearing loss. While the authors caution that the majority of those imprisoned had experienced some form of hearing difficulty prior to incarceration, 76% of Indigenous prisoners reported ongoing difficulties in communicating within the prison system. Such findings suggest the correctional services responsible for prisons are not doing enough to prevent or minimize the impact of hearing loss for prisoners at large.

In recognizing the difficulties of communication associated with hearing loss, it remains plausible that the physical conditions of a correctional facility have a significant impact on relations among prisoners and COs (Bierie, 2012; Ricciardelli, 2019). Besides poor hygiene practices and increased rates of communicable viruses and diseases, outdated building infrastructure, poor ventilation and plumbing systems all factor into the health of a prison itself and to those who work and are incarcerated inside of it (Poirier et al., 2008). As Siquiera and colleagues contend, there is an “imperative and continual need to align prisoner's interests and well-being with the interests and well-being of COs, as conditions of employment reflect conditions of incarceration, and vice-versa” (2022, p. 59). Recent calls to reconsider the traditional architectures and landscapes of prisons in light of health, well-being, quality of life, and ontological security (Jewkes, 2018; Jewkes et al., 2020; Moran & Turner, 2019) similarly concern prison infrastructure health, as well as that of staff and prisoners. In sum, although some research documents the relationship between factors elucidated via smell and sound, there is no similar investigation that attempts to explore the impacts upon CO health and wellness in this way—an omission that we, in this article, seek to rectify.

However, the connections between sensory engagement and physical health are only one part of the story. The complication here is two-fold. First, returning to Moran, Jewkes, et al.’s (2016) recognition of prisons as very deliberate, coded landscapes, we must concede the potential for the harnessing of the senses to engineer particular effects. For example, in Martin's (2021) appraisal of prison air, the physical condition of air is not always considered as a simple consequence of architectural design or population density: it is constructed and sensed in specific situations. For Martin (2021), air is ineluctably practiced and political in his rich discussion of the politics of prison air in Myanmar prisons. Here, Martin considers prison air as both “a basic empirical and affective sensing of air, recognizing air as a scarce and coveted resource” and having “the possibility of sensing with air, whereby the discourses, technologies, rules, and practices of air can be utilized as entry points for the analysis of prison governance and the transitional dynamics of penalty” (Martin, 2021, p. 478). In short, how far may sense of smell (as the vehicle through which air quality is measured) be part of the wider punitive philosophy? Or, plainly, could poor air quality be deployed as an intrinsic component of a punishing strategy?

Second, sensory engagements do not only transpire as impacts upon physical health—there is a range of reactions, some of which have altogether much more to do with our individually-constructed and societally-informed values about wellness. In that vein, McClanahan and South (2020, p. 8) sketch out a criminological agenda more rigorously attuned to the “embodied and sensorial dimensions of harm, power, crime and control.” The authors suggest that the significance and power of the senses are particularly obvious when they are considered “in terms of their removal, loss, degradation or indeed, their weaponization” (McClanahan & South, 2020, p. 9). Inherent here is the recognition that our sensory experiences are also influenced by our own “sense” of the world. When one considers how senses and sensory experiences are products “of historical context and over time, [and] as humans and environments have interacted,” the significant and power of the senses will change and impact “our sensory and perceptual landscapes” (McClanahan & South, 2020, p. 8). Thus, in the prison context, the carceral setting, the senses are informed, shaped, and known within their historical and correctional context; their positioning and existence are informed by the environment. To this end, sensory “perceptions” are also crucial to understanding health and well-being in the prison environment. Air quality and sound quality are, therefore, variously and, often, contingently sensed, resulting in different articulations of sense of smell and sense of hearing in carceral space. In the following section, we outline our methodological approach before turning to evidence-based interrogation of these multiple engagements with the sense of smell and that of hearing via air and sound quality.

Method

In this article, we draw on the experiences of 60 Canadian federal COs. This multiyear cohort design (2018–2023) studies COs working in 43 prisons within Correctional Services Canada (CSC). Using quantitative and qualitative data collection instruments (i.e., surveys, semi-structured interviews, and clinical assessments), the longitudinal study assesses mental health, correctional work experiences, correctional training experiences, views, and perceptions of prison and prisoners, and career aspirations from their initial recruitment. Since the study is ongoing, this article deploys data from interviews with a selection of COs with at least one year of work experience.

Interview participants are recruited via an email circulated by CSC explaining the study and detailing our ethical protocols. When possible, a member of the research team, usually Ricciardelli, engages in a discussion in person or virtually to detail the project and answer any questions before arranging an interview. When data collection for the study began in August 2018, interviews were conducted in person. The COVID-19 pandemic forced data collection to be suspended between March and December 2020. When data collection resumed in January 2021, interviews were moved to telephone (Ricciardelli, Andres, et al., 2021). We have yet to find any discernible difference in phone versus in-person interviews. Interviews were as short as 45 min, on average about two hours, but some ran for three hours in length. All were voice-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Participation is voluntary and confidential but not anonymous. Correctional Training Program instructors and any liaison helping with data collection may know who is participating in the study. CSC cannot match or trace participants to the information provided, and has no access to raw research data (e.g., interview audio files, interview transcripts, survey responses, and clinical assessments). Numbers protect participant identities, and any other information that could identify a participant is removed; we also edited direct quotes for readability. ⁵

Following a qualitative research paradigm, we situate our epistemological position within social constructionism, grounding data in the perspectives of participants. Our approach to coding was semi-grounded (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), ensuring an analysis that is “rich in description of people, places and conversations” especially as we “investigate topics in all their complexity” (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003, p. 2). After NVivo coding according to a codebook of the transcripts, we recoded data on carceral spaces with a smaller codebook constructed in Excel, where we could quantify as well as qualify the experiences of COs. Overall, our coding scheme was inductive. We reviewed responses and catalogued themes across software as we immersed ourselves in the data to develop a fully exhaustive list of themes.

Research Findings: Quality Control?

Our interview guides asked about prison living/working conditions quite broadly and did not target particular environmental concerns. Nevertheless, in exploring sensory experiences of CO work, two subthemes emerged from the data as concerns raised about physical work that we focus on here: (a) air quality and (b) sound quality. COs reveal consistent hesitations and concerns with the quality of air, including scent, odors from activities, poor ventilation, and noise in their workspaces, which we raise as concerns for CO (and prisoner) health.

Discussion and Concluding Thoughts

The relationship between prison infrastructure and the lived experience of prison space is integral to the health and wellness of people living and working in prisons, where physical space affects the senses and is interpreted based on sensations for both prisoners and COs. Air quality and sound quality are two concerns that emerged from our data. As outlined earlier, prior research has documented detrimental outcomes of both factors upon prisoners, in particular omitting the impacts of the “pains of employment” on COs. In this article, reflecting the key role of prison officers in enacting and embodying the moral quality of prison life (Liebling, 2011), we focused on the experience of COs in the Canadian context and interrogated the influence of air quality and sound quality upon health and well-being. CO experiences reveal concerns with both aspects, supplementing ongoing discussions about CO health and well-being on and off shift (Ricciardelli, Bucerius, et al., 2021).

In their discussions of the sense of smell, CO participants revealed that prison spaces that were poorly ventilated or contaminated by mold created a perceived risk to physical health, which was often related to exposure to airborne pathogens. Similar considerations were also applied to the sense of hearing in prison, where sounds of high volume were reported to have detrimental impacts upon auditory capacity, and constant background sound was a negative stimulant in relation to job satisfaction. Communal spaces, often concrete and metal, create conditions for sound to travel, vibrate, and penetrate in institutions. Such discomforting poor air quality and sound quality can therefore be explained, largely, by poor physical infrastructure and the simple problem of many bodies undertaking multiple activities in restricted spaces. Such findings reveal a potential need to further research how prisons can best be made physically quieter or more effectively ventilated. While there is a clear link to wider conundrums for criminal justice (e.g., levels of overcrowding; time spent outside the building, etc.), there could be practical infrastructural improvements such as retrofitting facilities with noise-dampening walls and ceilings, or renovating ventilation system.

Although we acknowledge such infrastructural conditions remain the result of tight fiscal budgets and lack of investment in carceral space, ⁶ findings suggest that prisoner and employee health and well-being ought not to be sacrificed. A potential recommendation would be to review federal workplace health and safety legislation, policy, and guidelines for Canadian public safety personnel (PSP) (Oliphant, 2016; Ricciardelli et al., 2020). At the very least, we suggest future researchers may want to physically assess CO hearing and breathing to understand the prevalence of auditory and respiratory challenges among this population and, if found to be high, to consider mandatory testing for prisoners and COs to monitor their hearing and respiratory wellness. Accordingly, despite increasing recognition of mental health challenges faced by PSP, including those in correctional services (Oliphant, 2016), attention must also be paid to the physical workspace conditions that can potentially harm the physical well-being of COs. Given the significant role of COs for ensuring the moral performance of prison(er)s, there is a need to optimize outcomes for both and demand that they both experience solid respiratory health and hearing capacities. We cannot easily disentangle or divorce pains of incarceration from pains of employment, and so a focus on the former needs to happen in lockstep with the latter.

However, data reveals that participants’ “sense of the prison” (and ergo those pains of employment) is ultimately tied to their “sense of prisoners” themselves. Air and sound quality were frequently tied to the specific (and, often, undesirable) activities of the persons incarcerated in these spaces. Accordingly, behavior in space is seemingly more responsible than the space itself. Here, the complex relationship between sensations as physical feelings but also perceptions is most pertinently observed. COs experience sensations as a result of air and sound quality; these, in turn, are both (co)produced by and (co)construct impressions of the prisoners themselves. In this vein, incarcerated persons are associated with poor health, lack of wellness and, at worst, directly labeled as sources of risk and disease. To that end, we highlight how the physical quality of both air and sound in the prison environment is not only a factor in CO constructions of health and wellness but also has the potential to influence the way in which they discharge their role. This raises important questions about whether infrastructural improvement alone is enough to make significant changes to the prison landscape. It could be that re-orientation of prison staff approaches may have a far more consequential effect.

Overall, discussions about air quality and sound quality in carceral spaces are long overdue. Our hope is that our article reveals significant impacts upon health and well-being that we currently see in these prison conditions and leads to imagining a different, more hopeful, less harmful, future for COs and prisoners.