Prison Officers' Work Attitudes: The Influence of Background and Work Experience

Abstract

A number of work related attitudes were obtained from a sample of prison officers employed by the Western Australian Prisons Department. Prison officers were first cluster analysed to determine if there were any distinct groups with different attitudes. It was found that there were six such groups. A number of background and work experience variables were then examined to determine if there were any significant intergroup differences. It was found that only previous Prisons Department experience differed over the six groups and that other variables, such as age and previous work history, which others had suggested may explain prison officers' attitudes did not differ significantly.

In two previous papers data collected from prison officers in the Western Australian Prisons Department were analysed (Williams, 1983; Williams and Soutar, 1983). The papers examined first the relationships between a number of work related attitudes and second differences in the attitudes of officers in different institutions. However, these analyses did not examine possible relationships between officers' personal, social and work background and these work related attitudes. This appears to be a desirable extension of the previous analysis because Emery (1970), in his study of Bristol Prison, suggested that officers' social backgrounds may be important, while Morris and Morris (1960) argued that previous work experience may also be important in that they considered officers with a military background to be more authoritarian than other officers. Consequently, the prison officers' data were re-examined to determine whether or not such effects were apparent in the Western Australian prison system.