The Effects of Tenure on Staff Apathy and Treatment Orientation: A Comparison of Respondent Characteristics and Environmental Factors

Abstract

Because inmate rehabilitation efforts are influenced by prison staff, Pennsylvania's Department of Corrections recently began collecting survey data from corrections staff about their attitudes and beliefs for treatment programming. The present analysis focused on staff tenure, or length of time employed in a corrections field, and its effects on support for inmate rehabilitation. Overall, findings from bivariate analyses clearly showed that staff with 16 years or more of service expressed less apathy and demonstrated a treatment orientation perspective toward inmate rehabilitation. Findings from multivariate analyses showed that respondent characteristics including tenure and job category were stronger predictors of staff apathy and a treatment orientation perspective than were environmental factors associated with the prisons. Policy implications will be discussed.

Procedural justice and prison violence: Examining complaints among federal inmates (2000–2007).

“…This includes a measure of the True Novice rate (the proportion of staff having less than one year of experience), and the Near Novice rate (the proportion with between one and two years of experience at BOP). Experience here may proxy attitudes of staff (Antonio & Young, 2011), as well as knowledge and skills relating to processing inmate complaints or preventing violence and conflict. See Table 2 for descriptive statistics.…”

Procedural Justice in Prison

“…In line with these empirical results, it has been hypothesized that officers "mellow" with age (Farkas, 1999). Aging may, therefore, increase officers' interest in a human service approach, although not all studies have observed significant differences between older and younger officers (e.g., Antonio & Young, 2011;Burton et al, 1991;. Fourth, both officers who are relatively new to the job and officers with a long tenure can be expected to have more positive attitudes toward prisoners and, therefore, approach prisoners with more fairness, respect, and humanity, and have more positive relationships with them.…”

“…In line with these empirical results, it has been hypothesized that officers "mellow" with age (Farkas, 1999). Aging may, therefore, increase officers' interest in a human service approach, although not all studies have observed significant differences between older and younger officers (e.g., Antonio & Young, 2011;Burton et al, 1991;.…”

“…Second, it has been argued that due to a selection bias, the pro-prisoner and less punitively oriented officers are more likely to quit their job because they become dissatisfied with their working conditions (Jurik, 1985). In contrast and supporting the expectation that the most experienced officers are more likely to treat prisoners in a procedurally just way, it has been argued that officers who are more in favor of the custodial functions of corrections may drop out of correctional work because it also focuses on inmate treatment and rehabilitation (Antonio & Young, 2011;Farkas, 1999). Moreover, as mentioned above, officers with a long tenure are generally older, and aging may result in more leniency and in more support for rehabilitation (Farkas, 1999).…”

“…Prior empirical research on correctional officers' work experience has indeed shown mixed results. Some studies observed that new officers were the most likely to have a human service orientation (e.g., Jurik, 1985;Kifer et al, 2003;Van Voorhis, Cullen, Link, & Travis Wolfe, 1991), others showed that the most experienced officers were more likely to support the rehabilitation goal of corrections (e.g., Antonio & Young, 2011;Cullen, Latessa, Burton, & Lombardo, 1993;Farkas, 1999), and still others reported no significant association between years of service and officers' correctional orientation (e.g., Gordon, 2006;Tewksbury & Mustaine, 2008).…”