Staff and client views of the role of the correctional client: Conflict and its implications for treatment

Abstract

A comparison was made between staff and inmate conceptions of the inmate role in two correctional settings differing significantly in terms of degree of concern for custody as opposed to concern for rehabilitation. At each setting the ideas of the treatment and custodial staff were investigated separately. With the exception of the treatment staff at the custodial setting, it was foud that each institutional staff viewed the average inmate as significantly more active and aggressive, more dependent and less socially responsible than did the institution's clients. In an effort to contain this conflict, and at the same time make greater use of the clients' felt capacity for greater responsibility-taking, a program is suggested which would couple graduated demands for the client's pro-social adjustment with increases in the freedom of action permitted him. The custodial institution's treatment staff, alone of the four samples of staff considered, viewed the client as significantly more capable of responsibility-taking than did the client himself. It is hypothesized that this staff may have felt impelled to defend its position as rehabilitators in a custodial setting by exaggerating somewhat their clients' potential for rehabilitation. The clients at the two settings also differed significantly in that the clients at the rehabilitative setting attributed greater activism to the average inmate than did the clients at the custodial setting. It is hypothesized that this difference is a function of the greater freedom of action permitted at the rehabilitative setting as well as the greater youthfulness and lesser institutional sophistication of the client population from which that sample was drawn.