Prison is typically considered as a dangerous setting partly because of promiscuity and violence which leads to a whole series of suffering and frustrations among prisoners. Due to their occupation, prison guards must ensure the safety of the inmates, their colleagues, as well as any other persons working in prison and in the prison setting. Thus, correctional guards are the “pare-excitation” of prison violence and suffer stressful and traumatic events which each prison guard fears that he will endure as part of his job. Indeed, inmates’ sufferings and frustrations are firstly expressed towards them because they share daily relationship with inmates. In addition, because of the high inmate suicide rate, correctional guards are chronically confronted with horrible and dramatic situations It is common knowledge that this kind of unexpected event jeopardises the feeling of safety and heightens one’s vulnerability because one has the impression of living in an uncontrollable environment. One potential consequence of theses stressful chronic situations is the burnout. Burnout described a three-dimensional syndrome composed by an emotional exhaustion, a depersonalization and a sense of lack of personal accomplishment. Burnout is a severe psychological suffering that can lead, without cure, to depression. It has been initially identified among persons who are working with patients. Nevertheless, the researches show that burnout is not a psychopathology of work but of the relation with others. In other terms, burnout seems to arise when people share stressful, chronic and violent relation with someone else. If burnout doesn't appear per se in any international classification of mental diseases, clinicians often use the diagnosis of adjustment disorder in place of burnout. Purpose: Our aim concerns the study of the impact of victimizations on burnout among guards in French prison. Prison guards were chosen for two major reasons. First, the custodial role of correctional officers is typically described as a stressful occupation sensitive to burnout. Second, prison is generally considered “dangerous”. Indeed, victimizations like aggressions occur frequently. Thus, prison guards live victimizations and report burnout. Consequently, we hypothesize that burnout levels will be high for prison guards because of the aggressions they have experienced whether verbal, physical or armed. We also hypothesize that the intensity of the victimizations, whether it is a verbal, a physical or an armed aggression, will heighten burnout levels. Specifically, more the victimizations (aggressions) are intense; more the emotional exhaustion and depersonalization levels are high. Method: Two hundred thirty five prison guards from French prisons were involved in this study. Among these 235 correctional guards, there were 46 women and 188 men, ranging from 22 to 56 years old. Victimizations were very common because more then 87 % had experienced an aggression, whether verbally, physically or armed. They were asked to fill out the French form of the Maslach burnout Inventory (MBI). The MBI is a 22-item self-report measurement that assesses the three dimensions of burnout: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment. Items are rated on a 7-point scale ranging from 0 ("never") to 6 ("every day"). We have statically created a new global level of burnout with the three dimensions. It is called "burnout level". Concerning the variables processing, we have assessed two set of independent variables (VI): demographic VI (age, sex, tenure, level of studies) and correctional VI (penal status of prison, victimizations). Regarding our dependent variables, we have 4 levels which are (1) global burnout (GB), (2) emotional exhaustion (EE), (3) depersonalization (D), (4) personal accomplishment (PA). For the purpose of our study, we carried out variance analyses (ANOVA) in order to compare the averages of our groups of subjects. Further to ANOVA, we chose the Bonferroni/Dunn post hoc test, Results: The results indicate that demographic variables such as age, sex or level of studies have no significant effect on GB, EE, D and PA levels. Tenure has a significant effect on GB and D levels. Concerning correctional variables, results show that the penal status of prison has a significant effect on GB and EE. Prison guards working with inmates incarcerated for more than 5 years (centre de détention) report higher GB and EE than their counterparts working with inmates not already convicted (maison d'arrêt). Victimizations have a significant effect on GB, EE, D and PA levels. Prison guards with physical or armed aggressions report higher global GB, EE, D and PA levels than prison guards without aggressions. Furthermore, prison guards with physical or armed aggressions report higher global GB and D levels than prison guards with verbal aggressions Two major points are highlighted by our study. First, characteristics of prison and Inmates are related to burnout among prison guards. Second victimizations lead to burnout in our sample. Implications and areas for future research are discussed.