The Taint of The Other: Prison Work as ‘Dirty Work’ In Australia
| Author | Anna Eriksson |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745211047534 |
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The Taint of The Other:
Prison Work as ‘Dirty
Work’In Australia
Anna Eriksson
Monash University, Australia
Abstract
This article explores how prison staff in Australia view their work and how their work
is viewed by others, by applying a theoretical framework of ‘dirty work’.‘Dirty work’
is a social construction that refers to tasks that are ‘physically, socially or morally
tainted’(Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999; Hughes, 1958) and this article will apply this con-
cept to prison staff in Australia for the first time. The discussion is based on qualitative
research in seven diff erent Australia n prisons, rang ing from high to low s ecurity. The
article illustrates how staff responds to working in a ‘dirty’profession by refra ming,
refocusing, and recalibrating their daily worktasks;howthestaffuniformcanbeuti-
lised as a status shield and protector from taint; and how the stigma of ‘dirtiness’tends
to foster strong occupational and workgroup cultures which in turn makes cultural
change of a profession difficult. The consequences of the dirty work stigma for staff
and prisoners are discussed, with a focus on informal interactions, case work and
dynamic security.
Keywords
prison staff, dirty work, prison work, australia, penal policy, prison reform
Introduction
This article is concerned with the daily working lives of prison staff in Australia. In par-
ticular, it utilises the theoretical concept of ‘dirty work’(Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999,
2007; Hughes, 1958) to empirically explore how prison staff view their work, and
Corresponding author:
Anna Eriksson, School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Clayton 3800 Victoria, Australia.
Email: anna.eriksson@monash.edu
Article
Punishment & Society
2023, Vol. 25(2) 324–342
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/14624745211047534
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how their work is viewed by others. This examination is both timely and important as
Australia’s prison population is not only growing, but becoming increasingly complex.
Prisoners are presenting with higher levels of cognitive disabilities, personality disorders,
mental illness, and culturally specific needs (Segrave et al., 2017). This requires a prison
workforce with the skills, knowledge, confidence, and empathy to meet these challenges
on a daily basis, whilst maintaining the required safety and security concerns. However,
the training, education, support and mentoring of prison staff have not kept pace with the
changing prisoner population, and staff are sent into Australian prisons unequipped for
many of the situations they encounter. Not only does this put their own safety and
health at risk, but the wellbeing of prisoners’which in turn undermines efforts of rehabili-
tation and reintegration. In this article, I put forward the argument that one central reason
for the lack of progress and attention paid to the training and education of the people who
work in these institutions is the taint of ‘dirty work’that is associated with being a prison
officer in Australia. This article constitutes a first attempt to apply the concept of ‘dirty
work’to explore and explain the contemporary occupational culture of prison work in
Australia. In doing so, it contributes to the further development of the concept while pro-
viding an innovative and promising lens through which to better understand the prison
staff profession in Australia, and potentially more broadly. ‘Dirty work’refers to occupa-
tions that are ‘physically, socially or morally tainted’(Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999, 2007;
Hughes, 1958: 122). The concept includes a range of professions –from funeral directors,
garbage collectors and butchers to sex workers, plumbers, dentists and correctional offi-
cers –but what they share in common is a ‘visceral repugnance’(Ashforth and Kreiner,
1999: 415) amongst many members of the public. The first conceptualisation of dirty
work was put forward by Hughes (1951). He argued that work could be ‘dirty’in
several ways:
“It may be simply physically disgusting. It may be a symbol of degradation, something that
wounds one’s dignity. Finally, it may be dirty work in that it in some ways goes counter to
the more heroic of our moral conceptions”(p. 319).
Based on Hughes (1951, 1958) original framework around taint, Ashforth and Kreiner
(1999) expanded the definition, and suggested that physically tainted occupations include
those associated with ‘garbage, death, danger’;socially tainted occupations include those
with ‘tainted’clients, and ‘servile’relationships; and morally tainted occupations are
characterised’as those that are ‘sinful’,‘confrontational’, and ‘deceptive’(Ashforth
and Kreiner, 2014: 423). Some occupations, of course, “are tainted on multiple dimen-
sions”(Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999: 415). Ashforth and Kreiner’s work has been critical
to developing and applying the dirty work model (1999, 2007, 2014), and will act as the
foundation for the arguments presented here.
1
The arguments around dirty work and prison staff in this article are based on a major
research project conducted between 2013 and 2015.
2
The fieldwork included 230
face-to-face interviews with prisoners and staff across twelve prisons
5
in Australia and
five in Norway, however this article is concerned with the Australian data only.
Interviews were conducted face-to-face across different prison environments (high,
Eriksson 325
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