Prison officers’ experiences of aggression: implications for sleep and recovery

Background: Prison officers are at high risk of assault that can impair their mental as well as physical health. Such experiences can also disrupt sleep, with negative implications for well-being and job performance. To manage this risk, insight is needed into the mechanisms by which experiencing aggression from prisoners can affect officers’ sleep quality. By impairing recovery processes, work-related hypervigilance and rumination might be key factors in this association.
Aims: To examine prison officers’ personal experiences of aggression and associations with sleep quality. Also, to consider whether work-related hypervigilance and rumination mediate the relationship between exposure to aggression and sleep.
Methods: We assessed prison officers’ experiences of aggression and violence, work-related hypervigilance and rumination via an online survey. The PROMIS was used to measure the quality of sleep.
Results: The study sample comprised 1,806 prison officers (86.8% male). A significant relationship was found between the frequency of experiences of aggression at work and the quality of sleep. Work-related hypervigilance and rumination were significantly associated with sleep quality and mediated the relationship between workplace aggression and sleep quality.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that enhancing the safety climate in prisons might improve officers’ quality of sleep that, in turn, could benefit their wellbeing and performance. Implementing individual-level strategies to help prison officers manage hypervigilance and rumination, and therefore facilitate recovery, should also be effective in improving their sleep.