Corrections_Today_March_April_2021_Vol.83_No.2

nEWS&vIEWS

correctional officers in the Califor - nia Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. This two-part study, conducted by the National Disease Research Interchange, will first sur - vey over 8,000 correctional officers and conduct in-depth interviews of 40 officers from all ranks to identify the most significant organizational stressors. Once the researchers identify the sources of stress, it will use the Total Worker Health toolkit, developed by the National Insti- tute for Occupational Safety and Health, to work with correctional officers, leadership, and members of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association to establish facility-specific policies to mitigate organizational stressors. Correctional agencies have a growing number of options that allow them to be more supportive of officers, to promote a work-life balance, and to improve the overall quality of life for correctional officers.

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Resiliency Promoted by Correctional Officer Social Networks This research project also will attempt to isolate the stress associ- ated with organizational factors from the anxiety associated with the nature of the job. Northeastern University will randomly select 375 new correctional officers graduating from the Massachusetts Depart- ment of Correction’s academies and follow them through their first five years on the job. Through repeated interviews, the researchers will try to distinguish operational and organi- zational stressors from exposure to traumatic incidents. These interviews will also try to establish the role of correctional officers’ social networks in coping with stress, and how these networks change while an officer is on the job. This work will build on critical findings from a recently con - cluded Northeastern University study (mentioned above), which revealed that the social networks and support systems for correctional officers are particularly important to their overall

health and well-being. Those find - ings were an element of the study’s broader subject, correctional officer suicides. Environmental Stress Associated With Working in Restrictive Housing One source of organizational stress is shift duration and type of assignment. Oregon Health and Science University, through ongo- ing NIJ-funded research, is seeking to establish the link between work environment and stress. 6 NIJ has funded a new project for the uni- versity to explore ways to mitigate these organizational stressors among correctional officers in a particularly high-stress environment: restrictive housing. This research will evaluate the implementation of a mindfulness and group-learning intervention using the Total Worker Health toolkit. The researchers plan to enroll over 100 participants in 12 sessions that will feature a training video as well as group discussions designed to gauge current officer organizational stress

16 — March/April 2021 Corrections Today