ABSTRACT
Correctional officers (CO) orientations are reflected in communication styles that have implications for the successful adoption of responsivity principles within the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model for offender assessment and rehabilitation. Accordingly, researching and understanding CO communication styles and the underlying orientations is important for maximising assessment and rehabilitation of prisoners. This chapter draws on semi-structured face-to-face interviews conducted with 40 Canadian provincial COs who worked directly with incarcerated youth, to discern which orientations were present among the COs. It explains how the orientations impacted communications between COs and prisoners, and which styles were consistent with tenets of responsivity. Crewe and Liebling developed a typology of orientations held by correctional managers that served to identify liberal-humanitarian values and orientations in modern-day correctional practice. Security-oriented COs are less likely to see any grey area in rule enforcement, making them less flexible than harmony-oriented COs.
