Correctional Facilities and Job Performance Essay

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Job Satisfaction in Correctional Officers

Current Situation

One of the enduring problems in modern law enforcement is the high rate of job dissatisfaction among correctional officers, which, anecdotally is even higher than job dissatisfaction rates in other law enforcement professionals. There are a number of factors believed to contribute to this job dissatisfaction, which, in turn, contributes to other problems for correctional facilities, such as high rates of employee turnover. Job dissatisfaction can also increase danger in the correctional facility environment because it might impact prisoner morale, may result in correctional officers not being sufficiently attentive to changes in prisoner attitude, and may make it difficult to keep staff adequately trained to respond to situations that develop within the correctional environment.

Obviously, all of these scenarios can result in an increased negative impact on job satisfaction for other employees, so that the problem becomes cyclical. What that suggests is that employee satisfaction will vary by correctional institute, and that high rates of employee job dissatisfaction are likely to result in job dissatisfaction in new employees. In order to determine whether this is true, it is important to investigate the correlation between job satisfaction levels when a new hire begins working at a correctional institution and that new hire's own self-reported job satisfaction after the end of a traditional probationary work period.

If there is the anticipated correlation between prevailing job satisfaction rates and new hires' self-reported job satisfaction rates, then it seems clear that job satisfaction is not simply about changing working conditions but also about changing employee perceptions of those working conditions. Therefore, it seems likely that fixing the level of job dissatisfaction in a correctional institution is not as simple as replacing staff members; instead, there has to be an effort to change all employee attitudes.

Problem Statement

Is the level of general employee self-reported satisfaction or dissatisfaction at the time that a new-hire is employed an accurate predictor of that newly hired employee's self-reported job satisfaction or dissatisfaction three months after the employee has been hired?

Research Objective

To determine whether the prevailing rates of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction at a correctional institution at the time that a new hire joins a company have an impact on the new hire's own self-reported job satisfaction.

Research Questions

What is the prevailing rate of job satisfaction at the time that a new hire begins his or her tenure at a correctional facility? Do job satisfaction rates vary according to job type or does job satisfaction seem fairly consistent across the facility? What is the new hire's self-reported job satisfaction after three months of employment?

Hypotheses

The prevailing rates of job satisfaction in a correctional institution will be predictive of a new hire's self-reported job satisfaction after three months in a new job in a correctional facility.

Part Two: Literature Review

Introduction

For those unfamiliar with correctional facilities, the idea that living conditions for inmates are actually a very important consideration may come as a surprise. However, while inmates may live in conditions that any person outside of a correctional facility would find burdensome, living conditions are a serious consideration for the employees and administrators who handle the day-to-day operations in those correctional facilities. They must ensure that prisoners live in environments that are as safe as possible, not only to ensure safe conditions for the inmates, but also for the employees.

Many of the factors that impact living conditions are beyond the control of correctional facility employees and administrators, such as prison overcrowding or lack of funding. However, employee satisfaction is one factor over which administrators can exercise some control. Employee satisfaction is important in a correctional facility because low rates of employee satisfaction can have a very negative impact on living conditions for prisoners. Correctional facility employees who are unhappy in their jobs may contribute to high employee turnover rates, increase the risk of prisoner abuse, make it less likely that employees will notice dangerous conditions in the facility, and otherwise compromise the living conditions in the facility. The result is that high employee job dissatisfaction could actually lead to dangerous conditions inside the correctional facilities, not only compromising job satisfaction but also putting correctional officers, inmates, and ultimately the public at risk.

The goal of the research project will be to examine different things that impact job satisfaction at correctional facilities. One of the most significant burdens that administrators face in the correctional environment is a consistent and pervasive lack of adequate funding. The lack of funding not only leads to overcrowded prison conditions and lack of resources for prisoners, but can also lead to inadequate resources for staff.

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Correctional facilities may be understaffed or staff in correctional facilities may be underpaid, so that rather than recruiting and retaining criminal justice professionals, the correctional facilities end up with workforces composed primarily of people who do not have a long-term interest in criminal justice. Therefore, this literature review will examine what type of conditions are linked to lower job satisfaction in the correctional facility environment.

Body

One of the factors linked to employee job dissatisfaction is a high rate of employee turnover. While employee dissatisfaction is not the only cause of job turnover, the reality is that employees who are highly satisfied in all aspects of their jobs are not going to be seeking alternate employment. Graham et al. conducted an exploratory study to examine the reasons for correctional officer turnover at the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) (2007). They discovered that job satisfaction did play a critical role in helping determine job turnover rates. Moreover, they also discovered that organizational commitment helped predict turnover trends. Furthermore, they broke down job satisfaction into several different components: recognition, compensation, salaries, advancement, creativity, responsibility, moral values, and achievement.

In fact, job satisfaction is a complex idea, so much so that job satisfaction can be measured in familiar psychological terms. Udechukwu examined job satisfaction in terms of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Herzberg's Motivation Theory (2009). Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggests an importance of needs that begins with physiological needs, and then moves up through safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory is a two-factor motivational theory that considers those factors contributing to job satisfaction as motivators and those contributing to job dissatisfaction as hygiene factors. The factors leading to job dissatisfaction are: company policies, supervision, relationship with bosses, work conditions, salaries, and relationships with peers. The factors leading to job dissatisfaction are: achievement, recognition, work itself, responsibility, advancement, and growth (Udechukwu, 2009). What this research suggests is that some factors that may maintain job satisfaction, such as salaries, are not sufficient to make employees report feeling satisfied at their jobs. Instead, they are simply things that do not make people unhappy at their jobs.

Furthermore, when examining Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the need for safety is clearly an important need. It is one that is at risk in the correctional facility environment, therefore, it seems clear that if the correctional facility cannot guarantee a minimum level of safety for the correctional facility workers, then there is going to be a decline in job satisfaction. This safety, which would be a work condition, is something that can contribute to work dissatisfaction, therefore it could be considered a workplace stressor

Of course, workplace danger is not the workplace stressor in the correctional facility environment. Lambert et al. examined how the workplace environment in the correctional facility would impact workplace commitment (2012). Furthermore, these workplace stressors were further delineated into categories based on how they related to organizational commitment, with continuance, moral, and affective variables. By administering surveys to 272 staff at a Midwestern maximum-security state prison, the researchers looked at the association between various occupational stressors: perceived dangerousness of the job, role conflict, role ambiguity, repetitiveness, and work-on-family conflict with the three forms of organizational commitment (Lambert et al., 2012). What they found is that the impact of the stressors differed when viewed through the lens of different types of organizational commitment.

Slate et al. examined at employees from a private, minimum-security correctional institute by using a questionnaire to ask the employees about the influence of occupational and physical stress on those officers, management practices, and different demographic variables, and those related to the officer's thoughts about quitting their jobs. The findings suggested consistency across time in why people would choose to leave their jobs, with organizational stress being the greatest predictor of job turnover. In contrast, employees who felt that they were involved in the decision-making of the institution were less-likely to report a desire to quit their jobs (Slate et al., 2001). However, one factor that may have impacted the validity of the study was that less than half of the employees responded to the survey. Given that the subject of the survey was about job satisfaction, there is a possibility that survey responses may have been skewed positive or negative.

Thomas examined various aspects of the correctional facility employment process that might be impacted by on-the-job trauma, even….....

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