Purpose of the study. The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes of correctional educators in the California Department of Corrections toward their inmate learners. Procedure. A total of 228 surveys were mailed out and 156 correctional educators from the 23 correctional institutions in operation as of January 1993 responded. A systematic sampling process for selecting the survey participants, based upon a percentage or like number of vocational and academic educators, was utilized. Eight research questions were analyzed by means of one- and two-way Multivariate (MANOVA) analyses, Univariate (ANOVA) analyses, Wilks' Lambda, frequency and percentage results derived from the survey instrument. Findings. The attitudes of correctional educators seriously impact the probability of educational success as defined by breaking the cycle of recidivism by providing training and instruction to inmate learners. The data indicated that a majority of the correctional educators possess a positive attitude toward their jobs as indicated by their desire to remain in their teaching or instructional position. The data also indicated positive attitudes toward the inmate learner, and generally showed sensitivity toward inmates with learning disabilities. The data showed no relationship between gender of educator or inmate learner, or the number of years spent by the educator in either the public or private educational system to correctional educators' attitudes toward inmate learners. Implications for future research, training and educational policy development in the correctional education setting are provided.

The purpose of this study was to understand what is meant by spiritual care (andlig vård) as structured within the founding statutes and guidelines of the hospital church (Sjukhuskyrkan), the correctional services (Kriminalvården), and the health care services (hälso- och sjukvården) in Sweden. How the possibilities and limitations of spiritual care in Sweden are made visible from a socio-religious perspective is an overarching research question that forms the basis for the three sub-questions on how spiritual care is defined, designated and structured. The basis for the empirical material is partly text material from laws, presentations, guidelines, directives and basic documents for spiritual care and partly interview material from selected informants.Parts of the Constitution of Society by Anthony Giddens (1984) became the theoretical perspective. The method chosen emanated in the qualitative methods of Kirsti Malterud. The conclusions are that the structure for spiritual care in Sweden is strictly community-centered, and is reproduced through the individual actors, where the dominance of the Hospital Church maintains another ongoing and changing social system in spiritual care. This can create an unbalanced social structure in the arena of spiritual care. SST, Myndigheten för stöd till trossamfund (the Swedish Agency for Support to Faith Communities) and the Hospital Church have the means of power through the external caregiver structure on which spiritual care is based. This structure applies in a similar way to the spiritual care within the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, that reports structural imbalances that can lead to social vulnerability, discrimination and intolerance in prisons and demanding a Swedish vocational education. A clearer, patient-centered, approach is pointed out in this study, where patients with an existential crisis can be treated with either a general spirituality or a religious spirituality, where the concept of existential health through existential support can then be about both spiritual care and nursing.

A sizeable portion of the United States (U.S.) population works within the criminal legal system, and individuals who have legal involvement are a highly stigmatized population. Research suggests working with stigmatized populations can result in the transfer of stigma to professionals, referred to as associative stigma. While qualitative studies indicate there are negative perceptions related to working in criminal legal settings, there is no quantitative research on criminal legal staff’s experience with associative stigma and how it impacts job-related factors. The purpose of this study was to 1) examine the psychometrics of an adapted measure to quantitatively assess associative stigma among criminal legal staff, 2) explore individual differences in staff’s associative stigma, and 3) investigate associative stigma’s relationship with influential job factors. An online sample of criminal legal staff in the U.S. (n=198) were recruited to complete an adapted version of the Clinician Associative Stigma Scale (Yanos et al., 2017) along with measures of demographics, stigmatizing attitudes toward justice-involved people, and job-related factors (e.g., orientation toward punishment, burnout). An exploratory factor analysis identified two factors in the adapted-CASS named “negative stereotypes of working in criminal legal settings” and “discomfort with disclosure.” Regarding individual differences in associative stigma, those who were younger, worked fewer years with justice-involved individuals, and worked in probation agencies reported experiencing more negative stereotypes of working in criminal legal settings. Staff who had daily (as opposed to less frequent) contact with justice-involved individuals reported more discomfort with disclosure. Regarding associative stigma’s impact on job-related factors, experiences with negative stereotypes of working in criminal legal settings and discomfort with disclosure were related to greater emotional exhaustion. Further, as staff endorsed more discomfort with disclosure, they indicated greater punitive orientation, turnover intention, plans to leave their jobs, and less job satisfaction. Overall, results suggest that associative stigma has a negative impact on job-related factors among criminal legal staff. Therefore, examining ways to support staff and reduce associative stigma’s impact may address some of the challenges of working in the criminal legal system.

This study builds on the small but growing body of research examining the antecedents and effects of burnout on police and corrections officers. A review of the extant literature on burnout in general and on the literature exploring police and correctional officer burnout in particular identified several variables that contribute to the social-psychological condition of burnout. The variables identified in the literature review were grouped according to biographical factors (gender, race/ethnicity, and age), biographical stressors (marital status and level of education), organizational factors (occupational field, agency size, tenure, and rank), workplace stressors (recent promotions, transfers or discipline, and perceptions of fairness in promotions, discipline, and transfers), or life-event stressors. This study utilized the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) to assess burnout. The Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) developed by Holmes and Rahe (1996) was used to identify life-event stressors. The sample for this study was drawn from police and correctional officers attending professional development training at a regional criminal justice training center in Central Florida. Of the 577 students surveyed, 417 remained in the sample after duplicates were eliminated. A multi-stage analysis, which included analysis of variance (ANOVA), independent sample t-tests, and ordinary least squared techniques (OLS), was conducted to explore the influences of different correlates of burnout on police and correctional officers. Multiple one-way ANOVA models and independent sample t-tests were run first, followed by several stages of multiple regression analysis. In the initial OLS regression models, only the variables for biographical factors, biographical stressors, and occupational factors were entered in the models. In following stage, workplace stressors were added to the regression models, followed by the addition of life-event stressors into the final regression models. The correlates of burnout found to be most significant included race/ethnicity, agency size, and perceptions of fairness in promotions and discipline. Of the correlates that were significant, race/ethnicity and perceptions of fairness were the most noteworthy, since the data indicated White/Caucasian officers experienced greater levels of burnout than minority officers, a finding that appeared related to an officer's perceptions of fairness in promotions and discipline. In addition, a statistically significant difference in professional efficacy scores was detected between officers from smaller agencies (99 officers or fewer) and officers from the largest agencies (1,000 officers or more). The findings from this study seem to suggest that burnout may be influenced by perceptions of fairness in promotional and disciplinary processes, which may be confounded by an officer's race/ethnicity. To address this matter, police and correctional agency administrators might want to consider designing promotional and disciplinary procedures that stress transparency and emphasize merit-based outcomes rather than equality-based outcomes. With regard to agency size, administrators from small agencies should consider steps that make the job more rewarding to their officers so they are less susceptible to burnout.

This study uses data from HopeWorks, a Christian, faith-based vocational program inside the Shelby County Division of Corrections in Memphis, Tennessee, to examine factors affecting reentry success. Specifically, this research examines how spirituality - using measures that assess both spirituality (measured at the end of the program) and change in spirituality (measured as the difference between pre- and post-program measures of spirituality) - affects released offenders' reengagement with the program, ability to obtain employment, and ability to refrain from reoffending.

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