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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.