Attitudes Toward Prisoners and Sexual Offenders (From Sexual Offenders: Context, Assessment and Treatment, P 27- 32, 1993, Noel K Clark and Geoffrey M Stephenson, eds. -- See NCJ-150890)

• NCJ Number: 150894
• Author(s): T E Hogue
• Date Published: 1993
• Length: 6 pages
• Sale Source: British Psychological Soc
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

A 36-item scale was developed in 1985 specifically to assess general attitudes toward prisoners (ATP) held by British criminal justice system professionals.

Abstract

The ATP is basically a social distance measure, adapted to apply to attitudes toward prisoners in general; higher ATP scores indicate more positive attitudes toward prisoners. In the current study, a version of the ATP scale and a parallel scale measuring attitudes toward sexual offenders (ATS) were used to evaluate data collected from 164 individuals. Study subjects included police officers, prison officers not involved in sex offender treatment, prison officers involved in sex offender treatment, probation officers and psychologists who worked with incarcerated sex offenders, and sex offenders. Subjects completed questionnnaires which contained the ATP and the ATS scales. As expected, police and prison offices showed more negative attitudes toward prisoners than probation officers, psychologists, and sex offenders. Prison officers not involved in sex offender treatment scored significantly lower on the ATS than prison officers involved in sex offender treatment. 10 references and 4 tables