The aim of the study was to investigate correctional employees’ attitudes towards prisoners and correctional clients in relation to the employees’ own personality, as well as other factors, such as gender, age and years of employment. Using the big-five-inventory-10 and attitudes towards prisoners-scale to study 83 Swedish correctional employees, a correlation(r = 0.352, p = 0.001) was found between the personality trait agreeableness and a more positive attitude towards prisoners. It was also found that female correctional employees in general had a more positive attitude than males (Cohen’s d = 0.755, p < 0.001), and preliminary findings suggested that younger correctional employees might be more likely to hold either extremely positive or extremely negative views of prisoners, compared to older correctional employees.

The purpose of this study was to examine differences in attitudes towards prisoners between different occupations, political leanings and genders. To measure attitudes the scale Attitudes towards prisoners, ATP, was firstly translated into Swedish and later distributed as a part of a survey. This study is based on a sample of 144 respondents consisting of prison officers, students of criminology and respondents with experience from both of the fields. Both parametric and non-parametric tests were used to answer the stated purpose of the study. The results show that women exhibited a significantly more positive attitude compared to men, participants leaning left politically exhibited significantly more positive attitudes compared to both neutral- and right leaning participants. Respondents with experience from both the study of criminology and work as prison-officers exhibited the most positive attitudes towards prisoners with a significantly more positive attitude compared to the group of prison-officers. / Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka skillnader i attityd gentemot frihetsberövade mellan olika sysselsättningar, kön och politiska hållningar. För att mäta attityder gentemot frihetsberövade så har mätverktyget Attitudes towards prisoners, ATP, översatts till svenska och därefter delats ut som en del av en enkätundersökning. Denna studie baseras på ett urval av 144 deltagare bestående av kriminologistudenter, kriminalvårdare och deltagare med erfarenhet från de båda fälten. Både parametriska och icke parametriska tester användes för att besvara studiens syfte. Resultatet visar att kvinnor har signifikant mer positiv attityd jämfört med män, deltagare till placerade vänster på ett politiskt spektrum visar en signifikant mer positiv attityd jämfört med både neutrala/obestämda samt deltagare till höger. Det visar sig även att deltagare som har erfarenhet från både kriminologistudier och arbete inom Kriminalvården är de som besitter mest positiv attityd gentemot frihetsberövade och dessa skilde sig signifikant från gruppen med kriminalvårdare.