Let’s Work Together — Occupational Factors and Their Correlates to Prison Climate and Inmates’ Attitudes Towards Treatment

Abstract

The role of psychosocial and structural occupational factors in mental health service provision has broadly been researched. However, less is known about the influence of employees’ occupational factors on inmates in correctional treatment settings that mostly seek to apply a milieu-therapeutic approach. Therefore, the present study investigated the relationships between occupational factors (job satisfaction, self-efficacy, and the functionality of the organizational structure) and prison climate, the number of staff members’ sick days as well as inmates’ treatment motivation. Employees (n = 76) of three different correctional treatment units in Berlin, Germany, rated several occupational factors as well as prison climate. At the same time, treatment motivation of n = 232 inmates was assessed. Results showed that higher ratings of prison climate were associated with higher levels of team climate, job satisfaction and the functionality of the organizational structure, but not with self-efficacy and sick days. There was no significant relationship between occupational factors and the perceived safety on the treatment unit. Inmates’ treatment motivation was correlated with all aggregated occupational factors and with average sick days of staff members. Outcomes of this study strongly emphasize the importance of a positive social climate in correctional treatment units for occupational factors of prison staff but also positive treatment outcomes for inmates. Also, in the light of these results, consequences for daily work routine and organizational structure of prisons are discussed.

Targeting Misconduct in Prison by Modifying Occupational Factors in Correctional Facilities

“…Secondly, misconduct in prison being a fundamental part of the everyday experience of correctional officers, working on treatment units was hypothesized to correlate with occupational factors (OF) such as team climate, job satisfaction, self-efficacy, and sick days. These OFs have been studied and described before by our group (26). Thirdly, we hypothesized that OFs, especially the occurrence of sick days, predict the extent of prison misconduct on treatment units.…”

“…This, together with a lower staffinmate ratio, is intended to create a supportive climate in order to achieve the therapeutic goals, i.e. the reduction of recidivism (10,26). The social-therapeutic facilities are not separate, but rather houses or even units within the regular prison.…”

“…Previous research focused on the inmates' perspective on misconduct in prison has shown that inmates perceive less misconduct on treatment units compared to regular prison units (25). Our group has previously published data on how occupational factors relate to prison's social climate and treatment motivation of inmates (26). The studies are closely linked since they are both part of an evaluation project, overlapping of participants and psychometric measures will be described in detail in the following paragraphs.…”

“…Twenty-five correctional officers (41.7%; Age M = 46.4 years; SD = 8.9; Min-Max = 30-57) from the preventive detention unit agreed to participate. Data from the same correctional officers studied in a previous paper (26) have been analyzed to investigate the influence of occupational factors on prison misconduct (previous study n = 63, current study n = 60).…”

“…Due to data protection regulations sick days could only be collected as average numbers per year. The studied OFs, namely Team climate, Job satisfaction, Self-efficacy, and Sick days are also described in detail in our previous study (26).…”