There are more than 180,000 people working in more than 1,500 state prisons across the United States, and for years these staff have been working in environments defined by chronic understaffing, high turnover, and increasingly complex responsibilities. As departments of corrections (DOCs) confront these challenges, they must keep in mind the shifting needs of the corrections workforce. One largely overlooked dimension of the staffing crisis is the looming cliff of retirements as older staff, who make up a substantial share of corrections staff, age out of the workforce.

There is substantial research discussing how the social and political contexts of one’s upbringing can lead to differences in expressed preferences and worldviews across many domains. For these reasons, it is important to establish how different generations of staff experience the workplace so prisons can adjust recruitment and retention policies to meet the needs of staff of all generations. Partnering with five state prisons and five local research institutions, the Urban Institute’s Prison Research and Innovation Initiative aimed to better understand and improve prison living and working conditions. This brief summarizes findings of generational differences among staff as expressed in three waves of climate surveys administered by local research partners to more than 1,500 corrections staff in five states.

Why This Matters

Generational divides shape how corrections officers (COs) understand their roles and responsibilities, view the purpose of prison, and engage with their workplace. These differences have implications for the safety and security of both staff and incarcerated people, but also for the morale, retention, and long-term stability of the corrections workforce. As baby boomers retire and younger generations enter these high-stress roles, DOCs risk facing a deepening staffing crisis if they do not adapt to changing expectations around job satisfaction, workplace culture, and approaches to corrections work. Understanding how younger generations differ in what they value, and how these differences intersect with demographic and social factors, can help states adapt strategies to recruit and retain a new generation of staff as they enter the workforce.

Key Takeaways

This research highlights several differences in how corrections staff of different generations approach corrections work and understand the prison system as a whole, with additional differences by demographic and other job-related factors. Key findings include the following:

• Job satisfaction declines with each successive generation. Compared with baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z all report significantly lower job satisfaction, even after accounting for demographic differences and facility effects.
• All generations of staff express strong pride in their work and confidence that they have the skills necessary to do their jobs effectively. Despite this, all generations of staff are less likely to look forward to coming to work than they are to take pride in their work, suggesting that staff would want to stay in their work if they were better supported in doing so.
• Views on the purpose of prison differ modestly across generations. Gen Z places the highest importance on rehabilitation, and baby boomers and Gen Z express the strongest support for punishment. Among all generations, Gen X ascribes less importance to both suggested purposes.
• Other demographic factors also shape workplace experiences. Security staff report significantly lower satisfaction than nonsecurity staff, LGBTQ+ staff report lower satisfaction than heterosexual staff, and longer-tenured DOC staff are slightly less happy in the workplace.

How We Did It

Local research partners surveyed incarcerated people and corrections staff across five state prisons between 2021 and 2024. In total, they administered 28 climate surveys over three waves, yielding 5,268 responses from incarcerated people and 1,750 from staff. Surveys included “cross-site” questions, asked in all facilities, across seven domains, such as conditions of confinement, correctional practices, COVID-19 pandemic responses, and the purpose of prison. Responses were anonymous and not linked across waves. Urban conducted analysis of these surveys to produce cross-site findings.