There are a variety of reasons as to why neither males nor females desire to work inside of a female-populated correctional facility. Some of these reasons include the issues female prisoners create within the confines of the facility, greater rates of assault by female prisoners and other job-related experiences that make female inmates more difficult to work with (Gordon et al, 2013). There are also needs that female prisoners have that officers are not equipped to handle and would rather work with men, citing it is simpler to deal with male prisoners than females. Following are some reasons according to Crawley (2013) are why no one wants to really work with female inmates.

First, there are concerns about female inmates following directions from the correctional staff. Basically when an officer gives an inmate direction, they are to follow it or they get disciplinary write-ups (Lerman and Page, 2012). Generally an officer gives a male inmate an order and he will follow it because he knows what the potential consequences are if he does not follow direction. However, when an officer gives a female inmate an order, it is immediately responded to with questioning why she must comply, and then will tell the officer about the other inmates who are not being asked to do what she is doing with more questions about the validity of the instructions given to her (Lerman and Page, 2012). The most logical answer to this problem would have been for the female inmate to simply comply with the officer’s directions, but usually this is not the case.

Second, male and female inmates tend to respond to stressful situations in a different manner. For example, when a female inmate holds in her anger and frustration, it can lead to a breakdown and the female inmate can engage in self-harming behavior (Gordon et al, 2013). Women tend to have approximately twice the occurrences of suicide attempts than male inmates, which is a grave concern for those who work with female inmates. This is a grave concern because this type of stress can also wear on the correctional officer, causing cases of emotional burnout from the job (Crawley, 2013).

While some might think that these issues are a myth within the correctional community, the fact is these are legitimate concerns that officers need to be aware of. Crawley (2013) theorizes that these perceptions of female correctional facilities can be changed if the conditions within these facilities can be improved. As previously stated, women tend to react differently to stressful situations than men, and even for the first-time female offender the mere shock of being incarcerated can be an extremely difficult adjustment for female inmates (Lerman and Page, 2012). It has been suggested that mental health counseling for these inmates would be helpful and in turn can help the stress levels of the correctional officers working with them in such close quarters.

Additionally, educating correctional officers on how to properly handle female inmates will be extremely helpful in resolving these issues. If the officer is better prepared to deal with female inmates, he or she can actually become invaluable in the rehabilitation process for the female inmates they work with (Crawley, 2013). Education can also help the officers learn how to give female inmates commands in such a manner as to alleviate the need for the inmates to question authority and comply without any further incidents. When officers are properly trained, they should have no fear or reluctance to work with female inmates. Gordon et al (2013) writes that educating officers is the number one way to combat the reluctance of working with female inmates.