Hester Paanakker

7.1.1 Part 1: Value Convergence and Value Facilitation According to Prison Officers First, the thesis explored value convergence and value facilitation in the eyes of street-level prison officers. This answered research question one: What do values of public craftsmanship constitute, both in terms of ideals and in terms of their institutional facilitation, in the administrative practice of the frontline, and to what degree are those views convergent among prison officers? The results show that prison officers put forth a very compact set of four values only as uniquely characterizing the penal craft: humanity, security, reintegration, and task effectiveness. This rendered a mixed image of convergence: prison officers were found to adhere to the same types of (ideal) values, and prioritize them in a similar way (i.e. displaying strong convergence on the two dimensions of value identification and prioritization), but were found to attach a considerable variety of concrete skills, types of knowledge, and practices to these values (i.e. displaying some more divergence on the dimension of value understanding). Indeed, it is clear that prison officers jointly put emphasis on certain interpretations of values, creating a shared sense of the most common or important ways to translate values into concrete craftsmanship practices. This indicates a global contour of convergence, also on the dimension of value understanding. However, in practice this can still produce very different ways of behaving in practicing craftsmanship, as prison officers may differ in the way they apply skills within value categories, or in the way they apply skills from different value categories. Furthermore, prison officers displayed strong convergence in their views on the institutional facilitation of craftsmanship values in practice. This is exemplified by a negative perception of the penal institutional climate as one that evokes overall negativity and frustration with their tasks and work context. It is seen as having a powerful focus on efficiency measures and an interpretation of task effectiveness as mere box ticking and number obsession. Specifically, this is a first indication of organizational managers who may enforce instrumental values of target- oriented and performance-induced managerial control at the expense of the attainment of the personal, intrinsic, and moral values of professionals at street level. As such, it is a first indication of value divergence between different levels. 163 Conclusions and Discussion