To outsiders, prisons vacillate between visions of regimented order and anarchic disorder. The place of rules in prison sits at the fulcrum between these two visions of regulation. Based on 131 qualitative interviews with correctional officers across four different prisons in western Canada, we examine how correctional officers understand and exercise discretion in prison. Our findings highlight how an officer's habitus shapes individual instances of discretionary decision‐making. We show how officers modify how they exercise discretion in light of their views on how incarcerated people, fellow officers, and supervisors will interpret their decisions. Although existing research often sees a correlation between “rule‐following” by incarcerated individuals and official statistics on such misdeeds, our data highlight that official statistics on rule violations do not easily represent the rate or frequency of such misbehavior. Instead, these numbers are highly discretionary organizational accomplishments. Our findings advance an appreciation for correctional officer discretion by focusing on the range of factors officers might contemplate in forward‐looking decisions about applying a rule and how they rationalize the nonenforcement of rules.

中文翻译：

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挑选战：监狱中的惩教人员，规则和酌处权

对于局外人来说，监狱在有秩序的秩序和无政府状态之间摇摆不定。监狱中的规则位置位于这两种监管愿景之间的支点。基于对加拿大西部四个不同监狱中的惩教人员进行的131次定性访谈，我们研究了惩教人员如何理解和行使监狱自由裁量权。我们的发现突出了军官的习性如何塑造酌情决策的个别情况。我们将根据被监禁人员，同事和上级如何解释其决定的观点，向他们展示军官如何修改其行使自由裁量权的方式。尽管现有研究经常发现被监禁者的“遵循规则”与有关此类不当行为的官方统计之间存在关联，我们的数据突出表明，有关规则违规的官方统计数据无法轻松代表此类不当行为的发生率或发生频率。取而代之的是，这些数字是组织在很大程度上可以决定的。我们的发现通过关注警官在应用规则的前瞻性决策中可能考虑的因素范围以及他们如何合理化不执行规则，从而提高了惩教官的判断力。