NCJ Number
167294
Journal
Crime and Delinquency Volume: 43 Issue: 1 Dated: (January 1997) Pages: 60-77
Date Published
1997
Length
18 pages
Annotation
Some prison managers assume that recruitment of correctional officers with postsecondary educational credentials promotes job satisfaction and offender rehabilitation; this assumption was tested using a sample of 218 officers.
Abstract
The correctional officers in this study participated in a larger survey of Correctional Service of Canada staff. A random sample was designed to represent five geographic regions within the jurisdiction and 10 occupational categories. A total of 1,069 persons were approached to participate in the study, and 759 of these were available to participate when the data were being collected in the field. The final sample consisted of 658 respondents, and 218 were correctional officers. This study is based on the 213 correctional officers for which information on educational achievement was available. The dependent variables were categorized into five sets of measures: correctional orientation, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, career orientation, and job performance. Findings support earlier findings that postsecondary education correlates with endorsement of rehabilitation and job dissatisfaction; however, university graduates were not more willing than less-educated officers to engage in offender treatment, and there were no apparent effects of education on job performance, job involvement, and career development needs. The findings imply that education alone cannot enhance correctional outcomes and lead to the professionalization of correctional officers. 4 tables and 34 references