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Two major forms of organizational trust are supervisor trust and management trust. Guided by the job demand-resources model, this exploratory study examined how the job demand variables of role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload, and fear of being victimized at work and the job resource variables of instrumental communication, job autonomy, job variety, and quality training were linked to both forms of organizational trust among staff at a private U.S. prison. Results showed that workplace variables predicted both types of trust and were generally stronger predictors than personal attributes. Moreover, resources played a greater role than job demands in shaping both supervisor and management trust. Among the demands, only role conflict was a significant negative predictor of supervisor trust and management trust. Instrumental communication, job autonomy, and job variety were significant positive predictors of supervisor trust. Job autonomy and job variety both had significant positive associations with management trust., Competing Interests: Nancy L. Hogan declared no conflicts of interest Eric G. Lambert declared no conflicts of interest Jennifer L. Lanterman declared no conflicts of interest Emily Berthelot declared no conflicts of interest, (© 2023 The Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.)

In the United States, institutional corrections is a major undertaking that requires substantial financial resources. Correctional staff are the essential element to ensuring the safety and security of these institutions, which house approximately 2.2 million adults. Thus, it is invaluable to explore work environment variables that contribute to their success. One area that has received scant attention is staff views of inmate medical care and their effect on job involvement and organizational commitment. This study focused on the effects of views concerning the proper handling of inmate infectious diseases, the quality of medical care provided to inmates, the timeliness of the responses to inmate medical needs, turnover of medical staff, and inmate medical privacy rights. Results indicate that proper handling of inmate infectious diseases and quality of medical care positively increase job involvement and organizational commitment.

This study sought to examine the relationship between correctional orientation (support for rehabilitation or punishment) and organizational citizenship behaviors (going above and beyond what is expected at work). All available staff at a Midwestern, high-security prison that housed juvenile offenders sentenced as adults were surveyed. Regression results suggest that correctional orientation does have a direct impact on organizational citizenship. Those staff indicating greater support for rehabilitation were more likely to report engagement in organizational citizenship behaviors. Support for punishment, however, had a nonsignificant association. Even among custody staff (i.e., correctional officers) and staff who spent half or more of their day interacting with inmates, support for rehabilitation had a significant positive association with organizational behaviors and support for punishment was not a significant predictor. In addition to the benefits of increased support for rehabilitation, such as better inmate relations, job satisfaction, and lower job stress, the current results suggest that another benefit of increasing support for rehabilitation among staff could result in greater engagement in organizational citizenship behaviors. Correctional administrators should explore different ways to promote support for rehabilitation among staff., (© The Author(s) 2013.)

According to the existing literature, support for punishment and support for treatment of inmates are the two major orientations held by correctional workers. There is a small but growing body of studies that has examined the predictors of these orientations. The literature suggests that personal characteristics account for little of the variance in correctional orientations whereas individual-level perceptions of work environment factors are related to correctional orientations; however, the effects of job burnout have not been explored. This study investigates the relationship between burnout and the two correctional orientations. Burnout has three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and ineffectiveness. This study finds that depersonalization is positively related to support for punishment and negatively related to support for treatment. Ineffectiveness leads to a lower support for treatment whereas emotional exhaustion leads to a higher support for treatment.

Work-family conflict and job burnout are both issues for 272 correctional staff (response rate of 68%). The two major forms of work-family conflict are work-on-family conflict and family-on-work conflict. Multivariate analysis of survey data from 272 correctional staff at a state prison indicated work-on-family conflict had a significant positive relation with job burnout, while family-on-work conflict did not.