Gender Matters

Abstract

The causes of stress for criminal justice practitioners, including probation officers, can generally be categorized into four areas: internal to the organization, external to the organization, the job or task itself, or personal in nature. Historically, criminal justice agencies have been characterized as male-dominated organizations. However, the presence of females in the criminal justice arena is growing, as evidenced in this project. The purpose of this analysis is to examine female and male perceptions of stress among what has been a predominately male-occupied position, probation officers. Overall, the findings suggest that female probation officers exhibit greater signs of physical stress yet, remarkably, reflect lower levels of occupational stress in the study at hand. With the limitations of this study in mind, prospects for further research are delineated.

The Impact of Individual Factors, Job Characteristics, and Organizational Variables on Job Stress and Job Satisfaction Among Community Corrections Staff

“…It is also surprising that input into decision making was not significantly related to job stress, as found by both Slate et al (2003) and Wells et al (2006) but was a predictor of job satisfaction. According to Slate et al (2003), allowing staff to have more input into decision making has been recommended by a number of prior studies.…”

“…Then in 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice released a report on the factors influencing stress, and what could be done to mitigate it, among probation and parole officers (Finn & Kuck, 2005). Since that report came out, a few more studies have looked at the impact of job stress on other job-related outcomes (Gayman & Bradley, 2013;Lee, Joo, & Johnson, 2009;Lee, Phelps, & Beto, 2009), and two additional studies were published looking at the factors predicting job stress among community corrections staff (Pitts, 2007;Wells et al, 2006).…”

“…A more recent study that looked at a number of potential influences on probation officer job stress was published in 2006. Wells et al (2006) studied gender differences in job stress among 925 probation officers. They included several individual and organizational variables as possible predictors.…”

“…Several studies have found that correctional officers who report greater input into decision making indicate less job stress (Lambert & Paoline, 2008;Paoline et al, 2015) and greater job satisfaction (Lambert & Paoline, 2008;Lambert et al, 2006) than those who indicate lower levels of input. Additionally, research on community corrections staff has also found that input into decision making influenced lower reports of job stress (Lee, Joo, & Johnson, 2009;Slate et al, 2003;Wells et al, 2006).…”

Exploring differences between the health and wellness of state police officers and community corrections professionals.

“…Stress has also been shown to be related to job dissatisfaction (Simmons et al, 1997), emotional exhaustion (Allard, et al, 2003), and employee turnover (Simmons et al, 1997). Additionally, research shows female state probation officers experience more physical stress, yet less occupational stress than male state probation officers (Wells, Colbert, & Slate, 2006).…”