‘In this job, you cannot have time for family’: Work–family conflict among prison officers in Ghana
| Published date | 01 April 2018 |
| Author | Thomas D Akoensi |
| Date | 01 April 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895817694676 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895817694676
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2018, Vol. 18(2) 207 –225
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895817694676
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‘In this job, you cannot have
time for family’: Work–family
conflict among prison officers
in Ghana
Thomas D Akoensi
University of Kent, UK
Abstract
This article documents the experience of work–family conflict (WFC) among prison officers in
Ghana. Although the term WFC has been used in relation to prison officers in the UK and the
USA, the context of WFC in Ghana is unusual. In this predominantly collectivist culture, family
responsibilities include obligations to the extended family. WFC is mainly unidirectional, with
interference running from work to the family. Officers are thus impaired in fulfilling their family
responsibilities, which consequently impairs their daily work and mental well-being. The ‘crisis
controlling’ or ‘paramilitary’ organizational structure of the Ghana Prisons Service (GPS) makes
it very difficult for the work domain of prison officers to accommodate family responsibilities.
Female officers appear to bear a heavier WFC burden than male officers, mainly on account of
their traditionally unpaid housekeeping role in addition to their paid employment in a masculine
organizational culture. The findings are significant, as they show that the promulgation of family-
friendly policies to alleviate WFC-associated stress lies in the hands of the GPS, since WFC
emanates solely from the work domain.
Keywords
Ghana, job stress, prison officers, work–family conflict and facilitation
Introduction
Prison officers represent a key institutional resource.1 They perform essential roles
in keeping prisons safe, secure and humane. The prison officer pursues one of the most
stressful occupations (Brodsky, 1982; Johnson et al., 2005), and the difficulty
Corresponding author:
Thomas D Akoensi, School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent, Medway,
3–10 Gillingham Building, Chatham Maritime, ME4 4AG, Kent, UK.
Email: T.Akoensi@kent.ac.uk
694676CRJ0010.1177/1748895817694676Criminology & Criminal JusticeAkoensi
research-article2017
Article
208 Criminology & Criminal Justice 18(2)
associated with combining work with family responsibilities – the work–family conflict
(WFC) – is a key precursor to stress (Lambert et al., 2002; Triplett et al., 1999). Yet
balancing work roles with family roles and responsibilities poses serious difficulties for
many officers. The concept of WFC is embedded in the notion that individuals have
finite psychological and physiological resources, and that work and family domains are
in competition for those resources (Carlson and Grzywacz, 2008; Goode, 1960). WFC
negatively affects job satisfaction, organizational commitment, support for offender
rehabilitation, turnover intent and voluntary turnover in various prisons and secure
institutions (Camp, 1994; Lambert et al., 2002; Woodruff, 1993). This finding endorses
the view that ‘most roles are greedy consumers’ because of their competing demands
for finite resources (Archer, 2000: 293). Participation in one role thus diminishes per-
sonal resources, and hinders participation in another role (Kahn et al., 1964). A further
complication of WFC is that stress can be transferred from one role or domain to the
other.
Little is known about the nature, antecedents and impact of WFC among prison offic-
ers. The literature originates in England and North America, which limits our under-
standing of the scale and nature of WFC among prison officers in other parts of the
world. In Africa, and particularly in Ghana, the traditional division of labour in the fam-
ily has been eroded by the increasing presence of women in all occupations, including
prison establishments (Ghana Stastical Service, 2008; International Labour Office,
2009). The change renders interference between work and family roles inevitable; how-
ever, no studies have yet investigated WFC among prison officers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
This exclusion is important, because studying WFC from a different socio-cultural and
economic standpoint would enable the development of ‘concepts and generalizations at
a level between what is true of all societies and what is true of one society at one point in
time and space’ (Bendix, 1963: 532). It is also important because ‘new ideas or policy
innovations uncovered in one society may have applicability in others’ (LaFree, 2007:
16). The present study is an attempt to address the gap in our knowledge by investigating
WFC among prison officers in Ghana.
Previous Research on Work–Family Conflict
WFC has evolved from its early conceptualization as a unidirectional construct, with the
direction of interference running from work to family (e.g. Kopelman et al., 1983), to a
bi-directional construct associated with unique domain-specific antecedents (Frone
et al., 1992, 1997; Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985). WFC may thus take two forms: work-
interference with family (WIF) and family-interference with work (FIW). Greenhaus and
Beutell (1985) argue that WFC is inherently non-directional and becomes directional
only when the individual makes a conscious effort to resolve the conflict. WIF and FIW
are thus ‘distinct but related constructs that form the overall concept of work–family
conflict’ (Lambert et al., 2002: 37; see also Byron, 2005).
Greenhaus and Beutell (1985: 81) propose that WFC may take three forms: (1) time-
based – in which excessive time-demands in the work (family) domain make participa-
tion in family (work) activities difficult; (2) strain-based – in which tension, anxiety or
frustration in one’s work (family) frustrate successful participation in family (work)
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