Thesis (M.S.)--Texas State University-San Marcos, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 64-67).

M.A. / The Department of Correctional Services (DCS) has adopted legislation that advocates for the rehabilitation and humane treatment of offenders. However, high incidences of assault and inhumane treatment of inmates by correctional officials were reported between 2005 and 2006. Furthermore the statistics of recidivism in South African Correctional Institutions is estimated to be more than 50% indicating that the rehabilitation of inmates in correctional institutes is of limited success. The aim of this study is to provide some insight into the ill-treatment of offenders as well as the rationale behind the high rate of recidivism in the South African Correctional institution by exploring the attitudes of correctional officials towards the rehabilitation and humane treatment of offenders. Understanding the attitudes of the correctional officials could be a crucial first step in understanding the ill-treatment and abuse of offenders by correctional officials and the limited success of offender rehabilitation as these attitudes have the potential to promote or hinder the successful implementation of the new legislation in this regard. An exploratory research survey was conducted among a sample of correctional officials at Leeuwkop Correctional Institution. The sample consisted of 121 male and 61 female correctional officials. The participants were selected from all major racial groups in South Africa (black, white, coloured and indian). Data was collected by means of a survey questionnaire. The questionnaire was designed by the researcher to elicit the overall attitude of correctional officials towards rehabilitation and humane treatment of offenders (whether it was positive or negative). In addition the factors that could potentially influence the attitude of correctional officials towards rehabilitation and humane treatment of offenders were also investigated. The results revealed that correctional officials have an overall positive attitude towards rehabilitation and humane treatment of offenders. Furthermore it was revealed that factors like gender, age, educational qualification, work experience and the type of offender under the correctional officials’ care have no impact on the attitudes of correctional officials towards rehabilitation and humane treatment of offenders. It was noted that some of these factors have no influence on the attitude of correctional officials when examined individually, however when some of the factors are correlated they have an impact on the attitude of correctional officials.

In this study, human movement studies, physical education, recreation and its contributions and stress have been placed in proper perspective. Conditions within the Department of Correctional Services regarding situations leading to the generation of stress in employees are also placed in perspective. Stress within the Department of Correctional Services is a growing concern both for Management and employees. This study is aimed at identifying stressors both from within as well as outside the work context as well as reviewing the relationship between stress and physical activity (sport and recreation) in general as well as in the context of the Department of Correctional Services sport policy. Heads of prisons have been selected for the purposes of this study as they are constantly under pressure. Heads of Prisons in the Department of Correctional Services are ranked according to the size of the prisons they supervise. Subsequently a Head of Prison could be ranked from a Correctional Official (CO) to an Assistant (ASD) or Deputy Director (DD). Although there are many methods of reducing stress this study proposes to view physical activity and recreation as a central part of life, much like sleeping and to show that sport and recreation can serve to balance work by providing restorative refractory periods as well as reducing stress. This study has shown that conditions in the workplace are a major contributor to stress. The study also shows that the DCS has excellent sporting facilities in most Management Areas and that these need to be utilised fully. The DCS sport and recreation policy should be reviewed to ensure that DCS employees make optimum use of the opportunities to participate in sport and recreation. Copyright 2001, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Bhoodram, PA 2001, Stress levels as a rationale for the establishment of an employee recreation programme in the Department of Correctional Services in South Africa, MA dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-11072005-161621 / > / Dissertation (MA (Human Movement Science))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Biokinetics, Sport and Leisure Sciences / unrestricted

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.

No description available.

Employees desire performance feedback which helps them understand what they are doing well, what they are doing wrong, and how to develop so that they can advance in their careers. Yet, many comment that they do not receive enough performance feedback to help them understand if they are being successful in their work or where they can improve. In this qualitative study, I pursued the question of what might prevent supervisors from providing performance feedback to their direct reports by interviewing a group of front-line supervisors and their wardens in two Midwest Prisons. My goal was to identify what the supervisor participants believed performance feedback was, how they understood and explained their personal feedback delivery practices, and how they learned to deliver feedback. My research methodology involved three stages of data collection, including collecting a range of documents from the prison system, one-on-one interviews with the two wardens who led the two prisons involved in the study, and one-on-one interviews with 16 Sergeants. I leveraged Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle (ELC) as the theoretical lens of this study. As Kolb (2014) explains, every time an individual has an experience, they have the opportunity to learn from that experience. I was curious to understand if a group of supervisors in a correctional work environment learned how to deliver and improve upon their performance feedback practices through the on-going delivery of feedback. Through the data analysis process, I found that both Warden participants deeply valued performance feedback as a teaching method and see it as an important method supervisors can utilize to enhance Correction Officer (CO) growth and development. Additionally, I found that the majority of supervisor participants (15/16) believed and understood delivery of performance feedback to COs to be a function of their rank, while a slightly smaller majority (10/16) explained it as a responsibility of their rank. Further, I found that the supervisor participants naturally employed a comprehensive range of performance feedback best practices including being positive and supportive (14/16), providing praise for work done well (13/16), correcting poor performance or incorrect understanding of policy or procedure (12/16), and conducting the feedback exchange as a conversation (10/16). Finally, I found that the supervisors’ beliefs and understandings of how they learned to provide performance feedback align with Kolb’s ELC. A majority (13/16) of the supervisor participants explained that they learned to deliver performance feedback through experience (having an experience, ELC first mode) in the supervisory role, while half of the supervisor participants (8/16) described how they learned to deliver performance feedback to Correction Officers (COs) through reflecting on prior experience (reflecting on experience, ELC second mode). Several of the supervisor participants (5/16) explained how they thought through and planned (Abstract Conceptualization, ELC third mode) their feedback conversations with COs, while a small minority (2/16) of the participants spoke to their practice of experimenting with new approaches when delivering performance feedback (Active Experimentation, ELC fourth mode) to COs. I close my study by offering recommendations based on the findings to front-line supervisors, wardens, and to trainers and educators working within correctional organizations.

Over the last 30 years, the juvenile justice system and juvenile correctional ideology shifted to become more punitive in nature. However, studies examining this shift are lacking in the literature. The present study will attempt to assess what correctional ideology, rehabilitative or punitive, is dominant within juvenile corrections by conducting a national survey to juvenile facility directors. This study will be based on prior literature, most of which has focused upon line staff in an adult correctional setting. From this prior literature, more specifically from the work of Cullen et al. (1989), scales will be created to determine the correctional orientation of the key administrators in juvenile facilities. This will allow us to assess whether the correctional ideology driving the juvenile system has in fact become punitive. The findings from this study have the opportunity to alter the current status quo in juvenile corrections.

Safety at work is of the utmost importance to employees and the organizations they work for, and as such, it is a central issue for occupational health psychology. Although dramatic decreases in the number of worker injuries and fatalities have been observed over the last several decades, safety remains a principal concern for organizations. This is especially true in occupations in which employees face serious threats to their personal safety, such as correctional officers (COs). While a number of studies have identified workplace factors that contribute to worker safety, few have attempted to draw a link between employee nonwork experiences and safety at work. In the current study, a model was tested to examine whether the relationship between cognitive nonwork recovery experiences and safety performance at work was mediated by safety motivation. Specifically, the effort-recovery model (Meijman & Mulder, 1998) and the concept of self-regulatory resources (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000) were utilized to test these relationships. It was hypothesized that psychological detachment during nonwork time can replenish cognitive resources that employees need in order to feel motivated to be focused on safety in the workplace, and negative work reflection can drain these resources. Furthermore, drawing on Broaden-and-Build theory (Fredrickson, 1998) it was posited that positive work reflection during nonwork time would have a positive relationship with safety motivation. Additionally, it was hypothesized that the relationship between these cognitive recovery experiences and safety motivation would be moderated by individual perceptions of safety climate. The hypotheses were examined in a sample of COs (N = 166) from two correctional facilities in Oregon. The results overall did not provide strong empirical support for the model. No support was found for the role of psychological detachment or negative work reflection. Additionally, perceptions of safety climate did not moderate the relationship between cognitive recovery experiences and safety. However, positive work reflection during nonwork time was significantly associated with safety participation motivation, which in turn had a positive association with safety participation. Additionally analyses revealed that this relationship was reciprocal in nature when utilizing an additional sample four months after data collection, such that safety participation motivation and safety participation predicted positive work reflection. The findings from the current study build on the research between the work-life interface and safety at work, suggesting that positive nonwork experiences can potentially be related to discretional safety performance at work. Implications for practical applications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

This study had a two-fold purpose. The first purpose was to compare the rankings of a set of knowledge/skills statements as reported by teachers of students with emotional behavioral disorders and teachers in juvenile correctional special education settings. A survey instrument designed to measure the importance, proficiency, and frequency of use of clusters of knowledge/skills statements was administered to 123 teachers in juvenile correctional special education settings in state institutions. Mann Whitney U analyses were calculated to compare the mean rankings of the two groups of teachers. The findings indicated that teachers in juvenile correctional special education settings and teachers of students with emotional and behavioral disorders were very similar as to which knowledge/skills clusters were important to their job performance, which clusters they were most proficient at using, and which clusters they utilized most frequently. The second purpose was to compare the teachers in juvenile correctional special education settings and to determine whether their mean rankings of the knowledge/skills clusters varied when analyzed by differing categories of age, type of certification held, years of teaching experience, and level of the teachers' education. Analysis of variance revealed no significant difference in the mean rankings in any of the comparison groups. Therefore teacher age, level of education, type of certification held, or years of teaching experience yielded no significant differences on the mean rankings of the knowledge/skills clusters.

Research has begun to identify recovery experiences during nonwork time as an important mechanism explaining the relationship between job characteristics and strain (Geurts & Sonnentag, 2006; Kinnunen, Feldt, Siltaloppi, Sonnentag, 2011). Corrections officers face challenges unique to their occupation (Armstrong & Griffin, 2004) that may contribute to the high levels of strain that currently characterize their occupation (i.e., short life expectancy, high suicide rates; Spinaris & Denhof, 2011; Stack & Tsoudis, 1997). Though previous research has not examined emotion regulation, recovery experiences, and coping within corrections officers, these constructs may be of particular importance to an occupation that requires employees to navigate the complex demands of managing an incarcerated population of individuals. Emotion regulation - managing one's emotions - is an important aspect of many jobs, and has been linked with employee strain, such as burnout, psychological strain, and psychosomatic complaints (Hülshege & Schewe, 2011). However, research only begun to assess nonwork recovery and its relationship with emotion regulation strategies at work, and additionally the influence of individual coping strategies has not been considered in past studies. I offered that recovery experiences (i.e., psychological detachment, relaxation, and mastery) mediated the relationship between emotion regulation at work (i.e., reappraisal and suppression) and strain (i.e., disengagement, emotional exhaustion, and psychological distress). I further offered, based on the matching hypothesis (de Jonge & Dormann, 2006), that emotion-focused coping strategies (i.e., emotional social support and venting emotions) moderated the relationships between emotion regulation, recovery experiences, and strain. To examine these hypotheses, data were collected via a survey of corrections officers in Oregon (N = 1317). Results indicated that emotion regulation at work was associated with strain, and this relationship was partially mediated by recovery experiences. The results further suggested that the coping strategies examined in this study did not appear to moderate relationships between the study variables. These findings are discussed in the context of the present sample, and implications for future research are considered.