Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment in Prisons: An Examination of Psychological Staff, Teachers, and Unit Management Staff

Staff are the most valuable and expensive resources in prisons. Although correctional officers have received considerable academic attention, we know very little about their noncustody counterparts. This study examines and compares the predictors of job satisfaction, institutional commitment, and commitment to a prison system among three noncustody groups: psychological staff, teachers, and unit management personnel. Data are taken from the 2005 Prison Social Climate Survey, a questionnaire sent annually to a stratified random sample of federal prison staff. Results of Hierarchical Linear Modeling analyses indicate that supervision and perceived effectiveness with inmates had a significant and positive impact on all dependent variables for each noncustody group. The amount of time spent working in a prison was also a common predictor of institutional commitment for all groups. Some differences in significant predictors were found across noncustody groups for several independent variables including security level, amount of inmate contact, and months in current institution.