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This paper examines empathy among a purposive sample (N = 633) of college and university students in the northeastern United States. Mehrabian's Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale (BEES) was used to measure empathy levels among criminal justice (CJ) and other majors. Descriptive and inferential statistics are used to compare scale and item means across gender, school size and type, grade level, age, and other variables. The authors also examine the relationship in the sample between empathy and attitudes toward punitiveness. Results indicate that male CJ majors possess the lowest levels of empathy, followed by males of other majors, female CJ majors and females majoring in other disciplines. Gender, major, and grade/class level were found to be important in predicting or influencing empathy. Possible explanations for these differences in empathy are offered and the pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed.The purpose of this exploratory study is to assess the extent of differences, if any, between criminal justice (CJ) majors and other college majors in empathy levels. The study reflects the authors' shared concern about an issue confronting both CJ pedagogy and the administration of justice in the future. From the authors' experiences of teaching a variety of courses at different institutions to various majors, our observations led us to believe that CJ majors are more punitive in their attitudes and less empathic toward offenders than are students in other (i.e., non-CJ) majors, and that the former also *An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, November 1999, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.We would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 126COURTRIGHT, MACKEY, AND PACKARD differ in their beliefs regarding what constitutes fair and equitable punishment for criminal offenders.Our mutual observations regarding a tendency toward punitiveness and reduced empathy among CJ majors became apparent during a discussion of student reactions to an assignment common to the first and second authors' courses. John Irwin's (1985) The Jail was used in both courses to illustrate the view that criminal justice interventions may not always provide a better solution for the individual offender and may also lead to the continuation and escalation of criminality by further isolating the offender from society, weakening his or her bonds to family, friends, and work. Students in these courses were sometimes not only unreceptive to the ideas put forth by Irwin, but some of them displayed open hostility to his ideas. These student reactions were often similar when discussions centered on other disadvantaged populations (e.g., indigent persons, AIDS victims, victims in general, etc.). In short, we came to believe that a substantial number of our students lacked the ability to empathize with offenders and other disadvantaged populations. Negative comments were not confined solely to the work of Irwin but we...

One hundred five rehabilitation employees were surveyed on the effect of leadership style on subordinates' perceptions of their work environment and on their job satisfaction. Findings suggest that leadership style affects service delivery.

This article is part of a larger study that sought to measure community satisfaction with and perceptions about the economic impact of state correctional facilities located within four rural communities in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.The project culminated in the development of recommendations for policies that could benefit rural communities presently hosting, or considering hosting, a correctional institution. This article briefly discusses the relevant literature and the methodology used in the study and then presents and discusses policy recommendations in a rank ordering based on their relative importance. The goal of this research is to recommend policies that may improve the sometimes strained relationships between correctional institutions and their host communities.