“We’re Still Good Guys”: Reshaping Public Perceptions of Correctional Officers

The public has limited direct access to prisons and largely relies on media, programming, or higher education to understand prison work, which tend not to depict correctional officers positively. Engaging in semistructured interviews with recruits (n = 375) and federal correctional officers who have completed one year (n = 166) or two years (n = 74) of service for the Correctional Service of Canada, we explore longitudinally how participants interpret how they are perceived by the public and what the effects are of such perceptions. Participants challenged representations of their work as punitive, inflexible, authoritative, and unempathetic, with felt impacts intensifying with more years of occupational tenure. We discuss how these correctional officer voices complicate public perceptions of prison work and the sociology of punishment literature.