Attitudinal Schemas and Training Receptivity: A Quasi-Experimental Study of Prison Officers

• In Event: Perceptions and Attitudes of Correctional Officer and Staff

Abstract

As the prison staffing crisis rages on, it is imperative for states to recruit the right individuals who can, upon receiving training, assume their posts and remain on the job. One place to begin is hiring people with the right attitudes. In this context, the right attitudes might be the belief that those in prison should be rehabilitated, and an officer’s role is to assist in that process. This is juxtaposed against officers with punitive views who believe their role is to make prisons harsher. Incoming officer attitudes take on added salience given that prior research finds they might form schemas through which initial training and socialization experiences are filtered through. In this context, our study examines the attitudes of newly hired prison officers and assesses how they fare across training, based on their attitudes. Using the potential outcomes framework, we quasi-experimentally examine the role of incoming attitudes on post-training confidence; our proxy measure for training effectiveness. Officers espousing greater rehabilitative views leave training with greater confidence, while officers with stronger punitive views leave with less confidence.

Authors

• Alexander Burton, The University of Texas at Dallas

• Cheryl Lero Jonson, Xavier University

• William T. Miller, University of Cincinnati

• Jiayi Wang, The University of Texas at Dallas