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Correctional staff are a necessary and valuable resource for correctional institutions, in both Western and Nonwestern nations; however, studies of correctional staff in Nonwestern nations, particularly those in Africa, are lacking. Improving the job satisfaction and organizational commitment of these staff are imperative, as both of these job attitudes have been linked to many salient beneficial outcomes. Most of the existing empirical research on correctional staff organizational justice explores only the effects of procedural and distributive justice and ignores interpersonal justice. Additionally, there has been little research on how procedural, distributive, and interpersonal justice affect correctional staff in Nonwestern correctional organizations. The current study explored the effects of all three forms of organizational justice on the job satisfaction and organizational commitment of staff at a medium security prison in southeast Nigeria. Based on Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression, all three forms of justice had significant positive effects on commitment. Procedural and interpersonal justice had positive effects on job satisfaction, while distributive justice had nonsignificant effects. Correctional administrators need to be aware the importance of procedural, distributive, and interpersonal justice and attempt to improve perceptions of these organizational justice variables.

Past research among U.S. correctional staff has found that work-family conflict has negative outcomes such as decreasing job satisfaction, decreasing organizational commitment, and increasing job stress. Little empirical research has addressed the association of the specific types of work-family conflict with job involvement. The present study contributes to the literature by separately analyzing the relationship of the four specific major types of work-family conflict (time-based conflict, strain-based conflict, behavior-based conflict, and family-on-work conflict) with job involvement among surveyed staff at two Chinese prisons. Job involvement varied by the type of work-family conflict. Specifically, time-based conflict and strain-based conflict had nonsignificant association with job involvement, but behavior-based and family-based conflicts had significant negative associations.

While there are different approaches to dealing with offenders sentenced to community corrections, the three major ones are law enforcement (surveillance), therapeutic (rehabilitation), and crime opportunity prevention. Using the study of U.S. community corrections staff by Miller as a guide, the current study examined the supervision strategy used by Chinese community corrections staff in the Hubei province of China. Chinese community corrections staff were more likely to use the therapeutic and crime opportunity prevention approaches than the law enforcement model. Predictors of each of the three offender supervision approaches differed. The results from Chinese staff were similar in many ways to that found among U.S. staff reported by Miller but differed in some areas.

Three principles correctional counseling (3PCC) posits that people in prison have inner mental health they have obscured to varying degrees with their own thinking. 3PCC further posits that people in prison can rekindle and sustain this inner health via understanding how three psychospiritual principles-Universal Mind, consciousness, and thought-coalesce to form people's psychological experience. We review the three principles and explain how exposure to these principles can lead to improved mental health and improved behavior. Then, we describe 3PCC and distinguish it from prevailing correctional counseling methods. Finally, we present a preliminary study that examines the efficacy of 3PCC for improving the mental health and behavior of people in an English prison. Our findings show that participants exposed to 3PCC showed a significant improvement in mental well-being and purpose in life, significant reductions in anxiety and anger, and improved behavior in the prison community.

Job satisfaction has been linked to many positive outcomes, such as greater work performance, increased organizational commitment, reduced job burnout, decreased absenteeism, and lower turnover intent/turnover. A substantial body of research has examined how work environment variables are linked to job satisfaction among U.S. correctional staff; far less research has examined prison staff in non-Western nations, especially China. Using survey data collected from two prisons in Guangzhou, China, this study investigated the level of job satisfaction among prison staff and how personal characteristics (i.e., gender, tenure, age, and educational level) and work environment variables (i.e., perceived dangerousness of the job, job variety, supervision, instrumental communication, and input into decision making) affect job satisfaction. The findings from ordinary least squares regression equations indicated that the work environment variables explained a greater proportion of the variance in the job satisfaction measure than the personal characteristics. In the full multivariate regression model, gender was the only personal characteristic to have a significant association with job satisfaction, with female staff reporting higher satisfaction. Input into decision making and job variety had significant positive associations, whereas dangerousness had a significant negative relationship with job satisfaction.

Successful police organizations rely on involved, satisfied, and committed workers. The concepts of job involvement (i.e., connection with the job), job satisfaction (i.e., affective feeling toward the job), and organizational commitment (i.e., bond with the employing organization) have been shown to significantly affect intentions and behaviors of employees. The current study used multivariate ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis on survey results from a sample of 827 Indian police officers to explore how perceptions of work environment factors affect officers' job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Organizational support, formalization (i.e., level of codified written rules and guidelines), promotional opportunities, institutional communication (i.e., salient work information is transmitted), and input into decision-making (i.e., having a voice in the process) significantly influenced the job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment of Indian police officers. Specifically, in the multivariate analysis, perceptions of formalization and instrumental communication had a positive relationship with job involvement; perceptions of organizational support, promotional opportunities, instrumental communication, and input into decision-making had positive associations with job satisfaction; and perceptions of organizational support, formalization, promotional opportunities, instrumental communication, and input into decision-making had positive relationships with 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.)

This study examined the importance of formal and informal crime control in the United States and India. Formal crime control relies on the law and official government agencies to deter criminal actions and to respond to criminal activity. Informal crime control relies on moral and social institutions (e.g., family, peers, and neighbors) to promote lawful behavior. Using the data collected from 928 college students, the study found that the Indian and U.S. respondents differed on most of the formal and informal control measures. Overall, the Indian respondents were more likely to rank informal control as more important than were their U.S. counterparts. Although there were differences, both groups of respondents shared similar views on the importance of both forms of crime control and held that family was the most important form of crime control.