A new study conducted in a U.S. prison suggests that incarcerated men have complex perceptions of staff that stem from previous communications and interactions.

The study was conducted by Emily Greberman, a PhD candidate at Rutgers University–Newark’s School of Criminal Justice (SCJ), who asked nearly 400 individuals incarcerated in an East Coast U.S. medium-security prison to provide written answers to an open-ended question on a prison climate to gauge their priorities and concerns. With help from Colleen M Berryessa, associate professor at SCJ, Synøve N. Andersen, associate professor of sociology at the University of Oslo, and Jordan M. Hyatt, professor of criminology and justice studies at Drexel University, this work is part of a larger project on prison climate and perceived conditions.

Published in the Journal of Criminal Justice, the study’s findings suggest that incarcerated people want accessibility, support, and humane treatment from staff, and when they perceive that these are lacking, the adversarial distance between the two groups can widen.

“While this focus on staff may be unsurprising, respondents’ written descriptions pinpoint aspects of incarceration they care about, and identify specific, primarily negative traits that perceivably define their relationships with staff,” said Greberman. “Our article addresses the catalyzation of negative emotions such as frustration, feeling uncared for, and feeling unsupported, as well as the potential implications of perceiving staff as being inefficient, unapproachable, and unwilling to help.”

“The prison environment requires incarcerated individuals to navigate many different norms, rules, personal constraints, and informal social dynamics,” added Berryessa. “Acknowledging the systemic nature of these dynamics, the study offers ways to support and encourage prosocial communication to improve relationships between staff and incarcerated people.”