No abstract

This paper analyzes the impact of individual attributes and organizational influences in the determination of correctional oficers' attitudes toward inmates. Drawing on survey data from 179 line-level correctional oficers, the analysis evaluates the expectations of prison reformers that more highly educated, female, and minority officers will hold more positive attitudes toward their inmate clientele. Contrary expectations drawn from the sociology of work literature suggest that the work-role socialization will overshadow the eflect of individual attributes in the determination of oficer attitudes. The analysis reveals that minority officers hold more positive orientations toward inmates, while education and gender exert no impact. In addition, organizational-level characteristics are also important in the prediction of oficer views of inmates. These findings suggest that correctional reforms that focus primarily on changing the demographic composition of correctional officers are quite unlikely to ameliorate signijicantly the tension in today's prisons. I t is necessary for both reformers and social scientists to develop more sophisticated analyses of the interplay between individual attributes and work organization characteristics and their joint eflects on behavior in the prison setting.

This study compares the patterns of homicides committed by women and men. Classic comparison studies of homicides by men and women suggest that each group kills in ways that are reflective of socially approved gender role behavior. More recently, however, research on women who kill suggests that they frequently do so in response to threats of violence by men. In contrast to the gender role and self-protection models of women’s homicides, the liberation hypothesis suggests that patterns of women’s violence will increasingly resemble patterns of violence by men. Based on our analysis of court records of 158 cases of homicides by men and women over a six-year period, we find little support for the liberation hypothesis and considerable support for the gender role and self-protection models. Compared to men, women more frequently kill intimates and kill in situations in which their victim initiated the physical aggression.

High turnover among correctional workers is a chronic problem in today's prisons. Despite the concern surrounding this issue, there is little empirical research that deals with the instability of prison staffs. This article attempts to identify the major predictors of correctional officer turnover in one minimum-medium security prison in the western United States. Multivariate discriminant analyses suggest that three factors are of primary importance in distinguishing continuing from terminating officers—race, opportunities to influence institutional policy decisions, and most important, satisfaction with perceived working conditions. The findings suggest that the development of individual personality profiles may lead correctional administrators to overlook the role of prison organizational environments in contributing to security staff turnover.

Despite the recent interest in women working in nontraditional occupations, few analyses have systematically compared the work-related attitudes of such women with those of men holding the same positions. This article presents an exploratory analysis, drawing hypotheses from the "gender" and "job" models described by Feldberg and Glenn (1979), to compare work-related attitudes among male and female correctional officers. Data drawn from a survey of male and female correctional officers working at the same prison facility (three male and one female units) are utilized to contrast the importance of gender, with experiences on the job as determinants of job satisfaction. The results support the job model, which suggests that the attitudes of working women are a function of their position in the organizational structure and immediate working conditions. Since the late lWs, women have been slowly infiltrating a greater variety of occupational groups in our society. Their experiences, job orientations, and attitudes have become subjects of intense inquiry by social scientists. Past analyses developed by economists and sociologists identified personal characteristics and family relationships as crucial varibles explaining the attitudes and behavior of working women (e.g., age, educational attainment, marital status, number and ages of children). Feldberg and Glenn (1979) referred to this mode of explanation as the "gender model" in the sociology of work.Studies in this vein have argued that because of prior socialization into family roles, female workers are (1) less involved in their work and less committed to their careers than men (Brim, 1958; Psathas, 1!368), (2) disinterested in the intrinsic aspects of their work (Kuhler, 1963), (3) more concerned with friendships than organizational influence or other working conditions (Rossi, 1965), and (4) more willing to submit to bureaucratic subordination and less concerned with autonomy than men (Simpson and Simpson, 1969). In contrast, explanations of the work-related attitudes and behavior of men have treated the work performed as a primary explanatory variable. The immediate job situation is frequently found to have an impact on a worker's subjective reaction to his job 0 1984 by The Sociological Quarterly. All rights reserved. 00384253/84/1500-0551$00.75 * The authors wish to acknowledge the suggestions of Michael Musheno and Russ Winn throughout this project. Thanks also go to Gray Cavender, M.A. Bortner, and three anonymous reviewers, for helpful comments. Bernard Boyle was of great assistance in data analysis. Mary Anne Legarski, Jody Horn, Annette Moms and Marcos Andrade were of tremendous help in data collection. Finally, thanks to all the correctional officers willing to take the time to respond to the survey. 552 THE SOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY in the "job model" of the sociology of work. (See Feldberg and Glenn, 1979, for a discussion of relevant research in this vein.)More recent studies of women in the workplace have found the reliance on gender as a primary expl...