Being Smart on Crime: A Correctional Officer Study Through the Lens of the Norwegian System

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the effect of violent offenders on correctional officers’ lives and vice versa, and how that relationship affects our society. A violent offender is defined as a person who has been charged with or convicted of an offense that is punishable by a term of imprisonment exceeding one year; who the course of the offense or conducts carried, possessed, or used a firearm or dangerous weapon; the offense resulted in the death of or serious bodily injury to any person; and/or there occurred the use of force against the person of another1. Secondly, for the purpose of this thesis I will exclude military detainees (ie. Guantanamo Bay detainees), persons incarcerated on political grounds (ie. Nelson Mandela), and juvenile violent offenders as they all, I believe, follow a different construct. I chose violent offenders as my focus because as a society we want to punish them the hardest for committing heinous acts and choose to ostracize them from society. As a consequence, many convicted violent offenders are sent to maximum security prisons where we choose to forget about them, and we are oblivious to the effect that they have on the lives of correctional officers, and our lives as well. Through the analysis of literature and domestic and international case studies, I further explain this juxtaposition and offer policy recommendations that can help improve the job and lives of correctional officers and by affect the lives of inmates, and have a substantial positive societal effect.