Experiences and interactions with treatment staff: reactions from state prison inmates

Abstract

Incarceration should allow inmates an opportunity for rehabilitation and correcting their criminal thinking and inappropriate behavior that contributed to their imprisonment. The current study gathered data from a Prison Culture Questionnaire administered to inmates from a state correctional system. The analysis examined inmates’ perceptions of treatment staff who were employed in the prison. This was an exploratory analysis. Overall, responses to Likert-scale items revealed that inmates believed treatment staff were fair, polite, respectful, helpful, good communicators, interested in listening to their concerns, understood living in prison was stressful, and had a good working relationship with them; however, they were undecided about whether treatment staff showed compassion, could reduce conflict, enforced rules consistently, were good role models, explained their decision making, cared about the impact of their behavior, or valued inmates as human beings. Also, findings from a content analysis revealed five broad themes about inmates’ experiences and interactions with treatment staff (competent professionals, critical and inappropriate, respectful, minimal contact, and hybrid/mixed responses). Responses provided by male and female inmates about their experiences and interactions with treatment staff were similar; however, several gender-specific findings were uncovered. A narrative compiling the most comprehensive inmate responses is shown.