Hester Paanakker

Coping Strategy 2: Street-level Workers Combine Bureaucratic Loyalty With Discretionary Flexibility Finally, a second group of street-level workers employs a coping strategy that is located at the other extreme –that is, one of street-level change willingness rather than obstruction. To deal with increasingly challenging moral demands, this second coping strategy concerns the combination of bureaucratic loyalty and discretionary flexibility . The nature of prison officers instructs them to be loyal to superiors and the policy enforced upon them, even if they strongly disagree, and they use their discretionary power and experience on the ground to find ways of evading the most undesirable effects of value divergence, operating “on the edges.” These street-level workers employ the experience they have to optimize working practice and to find inventive ways of adapting policies and demands from the top to street-level realities. Through the full exploitation of their discretionary space (and, sometimes, beyond), they alleviate policy effects that undermine core values in service delivery, and actively circumvent the negative consequences of value divergence for their own psychological well-being and for the well-being of the detainees they cater for: I think along with the system. (Prison officer 7, facility 1). No, I move along with the developments of the world so to speak. Change remains always necessary. […] I am bound to protocols and if I cannot evade them, I just have to support them. (Prison officer 18, facility 1) Basically you are in a straitjacket, so it can go two ways: you become a chameleon and try to adapt to the situation, so that everything, well, runs smoothly again. We are very creative when it comes to that. Or you say ‘I quit the job, because that is the other side of the story.’ (Prison officer 14, facility 2) I will always find a way to fix it. (Prison officer 13, facility 1) In both the interviews and observations, we found many examples that characterize this second group of prison officers. They put loyalty first in two ways: towards clients and also towards the penal policies, values, and mission. In this case study, these prison officers were found still to be in majority, but the balance could easily reverse because of the mounting and enhancing 153 The Effect of Value Divergence