Suffolk University Sociology & Criminal Justice Assistant Professor Carlos Monteiro has received a nearly $1million grant from the National Institute of Justice to implement and assess organizational change in the Massachusetts Department of Corrections as part of a study designed to improve the health and wellbeing of correctional officers by shifting deeply ingrained occupational policies and department procedures. 

The four-year study will be conducted in partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Correction (DOC) and the Massachusetts Correctional Officers Federated Union (MCOFU), and will build upon principal investigator Monteiro’s previous research studying correctional officer health and wellbeing. He and colleague Natasha Frost from Northeastern University, a co-investigator on this study, began their work with the Mass DOC in 2015 in response to high rates of suicides among correctional officers. Working extensively with the correctional officers – including conducting over 1,200 interviews – Monteiro and Frost identified conditions that they believe contribute to anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and other negative impacts.  

“We contend that correction work as currently structured with its over-reliance on seniority and hierarchical decision making, uncompromising shiftwork schedules, forced overtime, and obscure disciplinary processes, elicits and sustains a subculture that negatively affects officers’ wellbeing,” Monteiro said. 

Monteiro and his team will spend the first year of the study conducting a needs-based assessment, relying on officers and stakeholders to articulate the department’s major needs and challenges, including the most desired resources and support and staffing needs. The needs based assessment will establish baseline levels of job satisfaction and occupational stress, concerns officers have about the disciplinary process, and current indicators of wellbeing including anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. An Officer Advisory Committee will also be established and will be comprised of officers from across the department who will provide strategic advice and recommendations from the perspective of those most affected by both the change and the research.  

The second and third years of the study will focus on implementation of workplace changes designed to promote and sustain organizational occupational culture change. The changes, which will be piloted at a test facility include a new rotating schedule similar to those used by other 24/7 professions such as nursing and policing and designing more transparent disciplinary processes. In the last year of the study, the research team will conduct another assessment to evaluate the success of the changes that were implemented.