Pre-service correctional officers: What do they think about treatment?

Abstract

This article presents the findings from a study of 319 correctional officers enrolled in the pre-service academies of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice-Institutional Division and focuses on their attitudes toward treatment programs in the prison system. The findings are based on surveys administered to approximately equal numbers of officers at the beginning of the pre-service academy and at the conclusion of the pre-service academy. The dependent variable consisted of a master scale consisting of fifty-nine dichotomous items that was designed to measure attitudes toward six treatment programs. This same scale had been used twice previously in studies of in-service correctional officers' attitudes. Three variables were found to be of particular significance in explaining variation in correctional officers' attitudes: race/ethnicity, size of the town in which the officer was living when the officer entered the academy, and age. The first two are of primary significance because they support the position that movement away from the homogeneous “good old boy,” Caucasian, rural-dominated correctional officer staff toward a more diverse staff has, in fact, led to recruitment of individuals who hold more positive attitudes toward treatment programs. Contrary to expectations, a significant difference was not found between the attitudes of male and female correctional officers.