Reflecting on new trans prisoner placement policies within Canadian federal prisons, in light of recent changes instigated under the Canadian Liberal Trudeau government, we provide knowledge from cisgender correctional officer (CO) recruits regarding these policy changes and underscore their views of working with officers who identify as transgender. Canada's new policies recognize the presence of trans prisoners and create new protocols accordingly, simultaneously challenging some of the foundational tenets of the carceral system. While overwhelming support exists from cisgender recruits for their trans colleagues, support among a relative minority of COs is contingent upon notions like safety and security grounded in a dominantly cisgender prison culture; a culture we situate within the wider context of an unsettled correctional prison culture.
Many criminal justice institutions implement evidence-based reforms. While most scholars are aware of implementation challenges, we still know relatively little about sustainability. Using longitudinal data from criminal legal staff implementing an evidence-based reform, this paper considers: What happens during the implementation of an organizational reform that affects continued use of these reforms? Guided by an organizational change framework, findings suggest sustainability aligns with key organizational goals including legitimacy, efficiency and effectiveness. While all sites saw the reformed practices as legitimate enough to initially consider adoption, two sites never adopted, four sites toyed with reform, and two sites continued to use the reform after the study was over. This paper explores sustainability and identifies legitimacy as an important factor that affects the routinization of new practices. Transformation of organizational change initiatives into routine practices should consider efforts to build legitimacy in lieu of primarily rationalizing on the values of efficiency and effectiveness.