The Negotiation of Meaning at Work.

As I read Etienne Wenger's book, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity 1998, I considered my experiences as a corrections officer and the changes within my community of practice at my place of employment since I started my career in 2001.  The reification of a major document called Creating Choices 1990, shaped a new kind of corrections for female offenders: one that emphasized their needs versus security-related issues.  Over time, however, the social and historical implications that supported a more security-related practice seemed to strengthen with the emergence of a new union. Women's corrections would be redirected on another new path.

As a result, my role has been shaped and reshaped as I continue to negotiate meaning within my community of practice.  Wenger tells us that meaning is influenced by the continuous negotiation between participation and reification (p. 54, 55). Participation is a complex process that is both personal and social, and combines doing, talking, thinking, and belonging (p. 56).  Reification is the process by which an abstract concept is treated as though it were a concrete thing or a physical object.  For example, a law is an abstract idea until it is written down and projected into the world (p. 58).  Reification guides participation within a group while participation provides a context for reification (p. 68).

The diagram below provides a visual of the interplay between the duality of reification and participation. 

When the Prison for Women (PFW) located in Kingston, ON closed in 2000, women's corrections in Canada changed direction. This turnabout was primarily due to the many investigations of PFW over the years that criticized the over-incarceration of women.  One such investigation was referred to as the 1990 Task Force for Federally Sentenced Women.  Its report, Creating Choices, focused on social justice issues and had the following criticisms: the centralized location of the prison kept many female offenders away from their families; the secure construction of the building was equivalent to a male maximum security prison which was not necessary for many of the female offenders; and, the program interventions were not gender-specific as they were originally developed for male offenders.  The findings and recommendations provided the landscape for a new era in women's corrections.

Consequently, the recommendations outlined in the Creating Choices document included the opening of five federal facilities across the country so that female offenders could be closer to their families.  The facilities reflected communal living and new programs were developed specifically for women offenders.  In 1995, Creating Choices was referred to as a living document, when Nova Institution for Women, the first of five federal women's institutions, opened in Truro, Nova Scotia.  The cement walls and steel bars of PFW were replaced with townhouses.  The absence of the fence, though, was optimistic and short-lived, once the female offenders began to walk away.

The Creating Choices document became the focus for the negotiation of meaning, as policy makers used the document to organize the various communities of practices found within the women's prisons (Wenger, p. 59).  In 2001, when I started my career, women's corrections was still in its infancy and the Creating Choices document defined my role as a corrections officer within a women's prison.  For example, instead of being called a corrections officer, my title was primary worker; and, instead of wearing a uniform, I wore civilian clothes.  The role required dynamic security which entailed a lot of interactions between the officers and the inmates. This dynamic security was considerably different from the static posts found in male prisons.  The very structure of these static posts minimized the interactions between officers and inmates. Of course, it was easier to provide dynamic security in a female institution since the numbers of federally-sentenced women are much smaller than that of federally-sentenced men.

As a consequence of the changes implemented, the relationships between corrections officers working in women's institutions and corrections officers working in men's institutions became strained (Wenger, p. 114, 115). Although both groups trained together and consulted with one another on an ongoing basis, primary workers in women's institutions needed a university degree to be accepted into basic training whereas corrections officers working in male institutions required only a grade 10 education.  The university requirement was added because primary workers in women's institutions had a considerable amount of casework duties compared to their counterparts in men's institutions.  Therefore, corrections officers working in male prisons could not easily transfer into a women's prisons like they could to another male prison.  In order to transfer, officers required not only a university degree, but they were required to take a course called Women Centred Principles.  If they failed the test, they would not be permitted to transfer to a women's prison. However, these same officers denied full access to our community of practice were given temporary and partial access to cover staffing shortages.

The reificaton of the Creating Choices document defined my participation within my community of practice. The reificaton was reinforced by advocacy groups such as Elizabeth Fry Society and the Citizens Advisory Committee. According to Wenger, these groups are examples of a periphery of practice which has opened the service up to public scrutiny (Wenger, p. 117). My participation and that of my colleagues provided a context for the Creating Choices document.

According to Wenger, participation is characterized by mutual recognition which is a source of identity (p. 56). In 2001, the identities of corrections officers across the country were strengthened through mutual recognition when they voted to form the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers (UCCO); a union that would represent their specific needs. Previously, corrections officers were represented by Public Service Alliance Committee (PSAC) which represents a variety of different government workers.

Participation in UCCO unified corrections officers working in women's and men's institutions. The meanings of inequalities were subsequently negotiated. The fact that primary workers and corrections officers have the same classification and pay scale created tensions in terms of differences in case work. The cost of clothing was also an issue for the non-uniformed officer. Over time, primary workers lost many of their case management duties. In 2003, uniforms were implemented in women's institutions. The term primary worker still exists but officers in women's institutions now identify themselves as correctional officers. A university degree is no longer required to work within a women's prison.

Wenger would identity the union's role as that of a boundary practice (p. 114). The participation of corrections officers who work in women's prisons in the boundary practice has redefined their role within their own communities of practice. The union's concern for staff safety has again changed the infrastructure of women's corrections with the construction of maximum security units. The reification of Creating Choices is still present; however, it no longer predominates the practice. A possible reason might be that participation in the boundary practice of UCCO has created a much larger social and historical contexts in which to negotiate meaning.

As I continue to negotiate meaning in an ever-changing environment, my goal is to balance the principles of Creating Choices with my security-related duties. Wenger warns about danger of participating in a boundary practice to the point where it becomes insulated from the practices they are supposed to connect (p. 115). In practice, I am an executive member of my union and I facilitate Women Centred Training for new recruits. I have learned that these dualities are important as I negotiate meaning within my community of practice.