The authors identify the most significant personal and functional determinants of professional deformation in the staff of places of detention, namely: lack of proper motivation to perform operational and service tasks; features of the microenvironment in which you have to work; psycho-emotional tension; lack of proper social and legal protection, etc. It is established that the staff emotional burnout in places of imprisonment is a form of professional deformation of the subject of professional activity, acquired by him as a result of protective mechanisms on the traumatic impact of working conditions in places of imprisonment of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. Responsibilities that require emotional expenditure, as well as the effort to justify it by devaluing the activity and its subject are disscussed