ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on fieldwork carried out in a local prison setting. It explores the everyday work regimes of prison officers by focusing upon the stategies they adopt to maintain control over their work environment and work relationships. The chapter particularly considers the means by which prison officers learn to exert authority over their charges and how that authority can be compromised and challenged. It attempts to capture the variety of situationally learned coping strategies adopted by prison officers at Martindale. The chapter describes and exemplifies some of the recurrent types of prison officer, characterized primarily in terms of their everyday coping strategies and consequent relations with prison inmates. The vast majority of prison officers at Martindale are 'weathermen', the flexible workers of the prison service. Equally, others have apparently retreated altogether from the day-to-day conflicts and negotiations of prison life.
