Burnout Among Correctional Staff: Effects of Job Satisfaction

Abstract

The article is devoted to the effects of job satisfaction of penitentiaries on their burnout in a developing country. Postmodern as an age of freedom and expansion of individualism contrasts with the role of penitentiaries, obliged to restrict the freedom of other people, and also exacerbates the dual nature of penitentiaries, responsible for both supervision and correction of convicts. The authors used JSS to measure job satisfaction with workers in correctional facilities of Ukraine (n = 78) and MBI-HSS to identify their level of professional burnout. The authors used descriptive statistics methods, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, the Shapiro–Wilk test. the correlation analysis with the Pearson correlation coefficient, Spearman’s rank order correlation coefficient and Fisher's criterion. A high level of correctional staff burnout was revealed in comparison with other developed and developing countries. Vocational burnout (emotional exhaustion and depersonalization) is likely to be affected by dissatisfaction with contingent rewards, communication field, and operating conditions. At least a statistically significant relationship between these phenomena has been identified. At the same time, only a weak relationship between the total job satisfaction and the aggregated global measure of burnout was revealed. Along with a high level of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, officers have maintained a high level of personal accomplishment, which requires additional research and application of another methods.