gendered perceptions of male and female inmates. Additionally, officers often subscribe to idea that working in a men's prison is 'real work' whereas women's prisons allow for less enforcement and less serious work. Prison guards tend to view female inmates as more emotional and therefore more difficult to manage than their male counterparts; in her 1987 book studying correctional officers who have supervised both male and female prisoners, Joycelyn Pollock suggests that these opinions are caused by preconceived gendered views of the inmates. In 1993 Dana Britton conducted a study of correctional officer views and experiences through a series of semi-structured interviews on career path, training, issues concerning gender, and future work plans with officers from a men's and a women's prison in the American Southwest. She found that officers consistently expressed a preference to work in men's prisons, citing differences between male and female inmates as the main cause; officers perceive female inmates to be more difficult to manage, more likely to question an instruction, and less respectful than males. Many respondents also characterized female inmates as more emotional and therefore more likely to become inexplicably violent, while male violence is rationalized as having understandable goals. In this way, female violence is seen as irrational and ineffective whereas male violence is seen as meaningful and understandable. Britton notes that these perceptions seemed to be based primarily on essentialized views of women. Officers also tended to inherently consider men's prisons as the general model, the real prisons, while they viewed women's prisons as abnormal and deficient. References Penal system in the United States Social groups