Abstract
This study examined perceptions of the prison social climate in two Australian prisons from the perspective of both prison staff and prisoners. Ratings of social climate were compared between a specialist treatment prison that provides intensive rehabilitation programs to violent, sexual, and substance-using offenders and a mainstream prison that does not specialize in offender rehabilitation. The results suggested that staff and prisoners at the specialist treatment prison rated the social climate as more conducive to rehabilitation, although the differences were less pronounced for prisoners. These findings are discussed in relation to the development of specialist therapeutic prisons and how assessments of social climate might inform assessments of their success.
Keywords
The rehabilitation of prisoners and offenders has, in recent years, re-emerged as one of the primary goals of correctional agencies in all Western countries. Rehabilitation programs are now commonly, if not routinely, offered in these countries to most offenders who are serving medium- or long-term prison sentences (e.g., Heseltine, Sarre, & Day, 2011), and the number of transitional support services and programs that are available for those leaving prison has also grown dramatically (Borzycki, 2005). For many jurisdictions, the development and delivery of rehabilitation programs has represented a significant investment in the context of relatively modest and decreasing correctional budgets (Scott-Hayward, 2009) and the increasing demands that are placed on service providers by growing prison populations (Walmsley, 2009). Public policy in this area is underpinned by the view that rehabilitation programs can, and indeed do, bring about significant reductions in crime and reduce both the direct and indirect costs that are associated with victimization and incarceration (Andrews & Bonta, 2010; Drake, Aos, & Miller, 2009).
At the same time, significant concerns have been expressed about both the quality and the effectiveness of rehabilitation programs, with doubts being expressed about the integrity of rehabilitative practice and the gap that exists between the stated policy and the way it is implemented (e.g., Andrews, 2006; Bonta, Rugge, Scott, Bourgon, & Yessine, 2008). P. Smith, Gendreau, and Swartz (2009), for example, have suggested that program effectiveness is often “compromised by staff drift and organisational resistance at both the frontline and administrative levels” (p. 162). Although there are many possible explanations for the implementation gap that appears to exist between correctional policy and rehabilitative practice, one that is commonly proposed identifies the environmental and interpersonal context in which rehabilitation programs are offered as placing significant constraints on program delivery (Shefer, 2010). This is an important issue for policy makers and practitioners alike, given the relatively recent development of specialist therapeutic prisons whose primary aim is to rehabilitate (e.g., prison drug units in the United States; Wexler, 1995; the Dangerous and Serious Personality Disordered services in the United Kingdom; Howells & Tennant, 2007). In addition, there is a history of specialist units being set up within correctional facilities to manage particular offender groups, such as serious violent offenders (Cooke, 1992; Day & Doyle, 2010). In Australia, two examples of such prisons are the Compulsory Drug Treatment Correctional Centre in New South Wales (Birgden & Grant, 2010; Dekker, O’Brien, & Smith, 2010) and Marngoneet Correctional Centre in Victoria (Morison & Craig, 2002). Both of these institutions offer intensive treatment programs and aim to provide an environment that is more therapeutic than that which can be offered in mainstream prisons. They are, however, also more resource intensive, and as such, it becomes important from a public policy perspective to establish not only that they are, indeed, successful in their attempts to rehabilitate offenders but also that they do actually provide an environment in which therapeutic progress is encouraged.
This article reports the findings of an investigation into the social climates of two different prisons: one with an explicit focus on offender rehabilitation (a “therapeutic prison”) and the other a mainstream prison. The study aims to establish whether measurable differences exist in the social climate of these two prisons, given the different focus and philosophy that underpin service delivery in each.
Defining Prison Social Climate
Despite the considerable appeal (and face validity) of notions of an institutional milieu or social climate (Beech & Hamilton-Giachritsis, 2005; Natarajan & Falkin, 1997; Waters & Megathlin, 2002), it has been much more difficult to define and operationalize what exactly is meant by such terms. The words culture and climate have, for example, often been used interchangeably (e.g., Lok & Crawford, 2003; Parker et al., 2003), despite their slightly different meanings. Culture can be understood as the overall philosophy and condition of an organization (a collection of shared beliefs among organizational members), which plays a central role in shaping members’ attitudes, perceptions, motivation, goals, and behavior (Melnick, Ulaszek, Lin, & Wexler, 2009). Culture can thus be best understood in terms of relational structures with which we engage and that help to define who we are and help to restrict the permissible range of behavior in social situations such that social order can be maintained (Matsumoto, Yoo, & Chung, 2010). Climate, on the other hand, refers to the perceptions of the organization at an operational level, such as its ability to be supportive of new ideas and openness for change (Taxman, Cropsey, Melnick, & Perdoni, 2008). Climate can thus be understood in terms of shared perceptions about “the way things currently are” and less constrained by organizational histories and traditions. As such, organizational climate may be easier to assess and change than culture.
Other terminology has also been proposed. For example, Brunt and Rask (2005) examined what they called the “psychosocial atmosphere” of hospital wards, and Ross, Diamond, Liebling, and Saylor (2008) studied what they referred to as the “prison environment,” relating it to the satisfaction levels of both prisoners and staff. Other terms that have been used include the “social environment” (B. Smith, Maume, & Reiner, 1997), “climate perceptions” (Parker et al., 2003), “workplace climate” (Carr, Schmidt, Ford, & DeShon, 2003), and the “ward climate” (Stevens, 1961). In addition, a myriad of social climate concepts can be found in the management, work and organizational psychology, and medical literatures (e.g., Dollard & Bakker, 2009; Garrett & McDaniel, 2001; Langdon, Cosgrave, & Tranah, 2004; Langdon, Swift, & Budd, 2006; Moos & Bromet, 1978; Ulrich et al., 2007).
The definition of social climate proposed by Wright (1993)—a set of characteristics that (a) distinguish the organization from other organizations, (b) are relatively enduring, and (c) affect the behavior of participants in the organization—is sufficiently broad to encompass both staff member and prisoner perceptions of the social environment in which they live and/or work. Schalast, Redies, Collins, Stacey, and Howells (2008) have proposed that the key characteristics of a social climate in a forensic setting relate to the extent to which the climate is perceived as supportive of therapy and therapeutic change, whether mutual support of a kind typically seen as characteristic of therapeutic communities is present, and the level of tension and perceived threat of aggression and violence that exists. It is this definition that is adopted in this present study.
Measurement Issues
The most relevant body of scientific work for understanding, measuring, and modifying negative therapeutic environments and milieus is that which has been developed in the past 30 years by Moos (1997) across a range of service settings, including health, mental health, and correctional institutions. One of Moos’s most important contributions to this field has been the development of the Correctional Institutions Environment Scale (CIES), a 36-item scale that has been used routinely for a number of years by the Federal Bureau of Prisons in the United States. Although Moos (1975, 1987) has stated that unpublished data exist to support the utility of the CIES (specifically, an analysis of a subset of the data collected by Wenk and Halatyn, 1973, and Duffee, 1975, found that scores on the CIES differentiated between six institutions in Connecticut). Nevertheless, subsequent research has questioned the validity of the instrument’s factor structure. Critics of the CIES have further identified problems associated with outdated item content, the time and effort required for completion in disturbed and unmotivated populations, the length of the measures for repeated clinical use, and the low internal consistency of some scales (see Alden, 1978; Saylor, 1984; Saylor & McGrory, 1980; Saylor & Vanyur, 1983; Schalast et al., 2008; Wright, 1980; Wright & Boudouris, 1982).
Unlike the CIES, which can be administered to both residents and staff, the Prison Social Climate Survey (PSCS; Wright & Saylor, 1991) measures only staff perceptions and has been administered annually to field staff at the Federal Bureau of Prisons since its initial administration by Saylor in 1988 (see also Camp, Gaes, & Saylor, 2002; Camp, Saylor, & Harer, 1997; Langdon et al., 2004, 2006; Wright & Saylor, 1992). The complete PSCS questionnaire is divided into sections based on different topic areas. The work environment section, for example, consists of seven subscales that enable staff assessment of the organization’s structure, their supervision, satisfaction with the overall organization, their department, their job, level of stress, and personal efficacy. Factor analysis has provided support for the validity of these dimensions, and item-to-scale correlations have been reported to be between .70 and .90. Internal reliability analyses yielded scale alpha coefficients between .80 and .91 (Saylor & Wright, 1992).
More recently, Schalast et al. (2008) have developed a new climate measure, the Essen Climate Evaluation Schema (EssenCES), which was originally designed for use in forensic psychiatric wards, although a prison version of the scale has now been published. This 17-item questionnaire measures three dimensions of social climate in secure settings: therapeutic hold (the extent to which the climate is supportive of therapy and therapeutic change), patients’ cohesion and mutual support (whether mutual support of a kind typically seen as characteristic of therapeutic communities is present), and experienced safety (assesses tension and perceived threat of aggression and violence). Schalast et al. report data collected from 17 forensic psychiatry hospitals in Germany from both staff (n = 333) and patients (n = 327). High internal consistencies were reported for each of the three subscales, and there was good support for the expected factor structure. Convergent validity was demonstrated in terms of correlations with related measures, including job satisfaction in staff. The EssenCES is now available in an English translation and has recently been used in three pilot studies in an English high-security setting, Rampton Hospital (Howells et al., 2009). In these studies, internal consistencies, factor structures, and convergent validity were similar to those reported by Schalast et al.
Schalast and Groenewald (2009) used the EssenCES measure to examine the social climate of 14 units in five prisons in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, 6 of which are described as social therapeutic treatment units. The study revealed that both prisoners and staff reported greater support (therapeutic hold) and safety (experienced safety) in the therapeutic units than in the general units. However, whereas staff reported more cohesion (cohesion and mutual support) in the therapeutic units, this finding was not reflected among prisoner ratings. Prisoners perceived slightly more cohesion in the general prison units as compared to the therapeutic units.
The Present Study
The aim of this study is to establish whether meaningful differences can be observed between the social climates of two different Australian prisons. One prison strives to provide a therapeutic climate in which prisoners are expected to engage in rehabilitation programs; the other offers a mainstream service in which a much more restricted range of programs is offered. As such, the study seeks to establish whether the findings of Schalast and Groenewald (2009) are, indeed, robust and apply across different jurisdictions. It is, therefore, hypothesized that the social climate of the therapeutic prison will be rated as safer, more supportive, and more therapeutic than the mainstream prison. This is an important issue for policy makers and practitioners alike, given interest worldwide in the building of specialist prisons that aim to promote rehabilitation.
Method
Participants
Participants in the study were drawn from two correctional settings based in one Australian state. Participation was voluntary, and a total of 144 prisoners and 109 staff members from both prisons participated in the research. One prison is a therapeutically focused medium-security institution that offers intensive rehabilitation programs for sexual offenders, violent offenders, and those with drug and alcohol problems to up to 300 prisoners (the “therapeutic prison”). The other is a minimum- to medium-security prison that accommodates more than 700 predominantly mainstream prisoners and offers violent offender and substance use treatment programs (the “mainstream prison”). Both prisons house only male prisoners. The prisoner sample represents just less than 25% of the total population of the therapeutic prison and just more than 10% of that of the mainstream prison.
The therapeutic prison operates in ways that are broadly consistent with some aspects of therapeutic community models but currently describes itself as a “treatment community” operating according to a set of guiding therapeutic principles. In essence, the community is used to provide a range of life situations in which members can reenact and reexperience their relationships in the outside world, with opportunities provided through a group (and individual) therapy process to examine and learn from any difficulties that are experienced. This is what De Leon (1997) refers to as “community as method” or the “purposive use of the peer community to facilitate social and psychological change in individuals” (p. 5). Two distinct types of therapeutic community have, however, been described in the literature: the democratic and the concept based (see Day & Doyle, 2010). The treatment community developed in the therapeutic prison is best understood as a “blended model” (Rawlings & Yates, 2001) that contains elements of both.
Based on the assumption that it is important to have experienced institutional life for a certain period of time before it is possible to make a reliable assessment of the social climate, a decision was made to exclude prisoners and staff who had been in a particular institution for a period of less than 14 days. This resulted in the removal of 3 participants from the prisoner sample; a further 7 did not report their sentence length and were also removed from the sample. This reduced the number of prisoner cases available for analysis to 134. A total of 7 cases were removed from the staff sample (2 were clinical staff who did not meet the criterion for length of service or failed to indicate length of service; 5 were operational staff from the mainstream prison who also failed to specify their length of service). This left a total of 102 staff cases available for analysis, of which 70 were operational staff members and 32 were involved with program delivery.
Materials
All staff and prisoner participants completed the following measure of social climate.
EssenCES (Version for Prisons and Correctional Settings)
The EssenCES (www.forensikessen.de) is a 17-item questionnaire (15 valid items; 2 positively worded unscored items) that was originally designed to assess the social climate within forensic psychiatric wards and subsequently adapted for use within a prison environment. The measure consists of three climate subscales, each of which is measured using five items: Hold and Support (e.g., “Staff take a personal interest in the progress of inmates”), Inmates’ Social Cohesion and Mutual Support (e.g., “The inmates care for each other”), and Experienced Safety (e.g., “There are some really aggressive inmates in this unit”). Participants (both staff and prisoners) indicate how much they agree with each of the statements using a 5-point Likert-type scale, with responses ranging from 1 (I agree not at all) to 5 (I agree very much). Higher scores on the EssenCES are indicative of a more positive social climate. In their recent validation study for forensic psychiatric wards, Schalast et al. (2008) reported moderately strong internal consistency ranging from Cronbach’s α = .79 to .87 for patients, .73 to .78 for staff, and .78 to .86 for the total sample. Internal consistency reliability in the present study revealed a similar pattern for both staff (Cronbach’s α = .72 on the total scale and .82, .74, and .75 for Inmates’ Social Cohesion and Mutual Support, Hold and Support, and Experienced Safety, respectively) and prisoners (Cronbach’s α = .64 on the total scale and .86, .74, and .62 for Inmates’ Social Cohesion and Mutual Support, Hold and Support, and Experienced Safety, respectively). The EssenCES demonstrates a reliable three-factor structure (Schalast & Groenewald, 2009).
Procedure
The research was conducted in accordance with the ethical guidelines set down by the National Health and Medical Research Council (2007) and with the approval of the state’s Department of Justice Research Ethics Committee. Following ethical approval, flyers outlining the nature and purpose of the study were placed on staff and prisoner notice boards. Interested staff members were directed to the program manager at each facility and were provided with a more detailed information sheet; prisoners who wished to participate in the study were asked to contact their case manager, who provided the detailed information sheet.
After consultation with prison program managers, a suitable time for data collection was identified at each institution. Two members of the research team attended on the designated day. With respect to the staff sample, the researchers addressed interested staff at an internal training session, outlining the purpose and nature of the research and providing details with regard to the anonymity of responses, confidentiality, and the right to withdraw from the study at any time. Staff members who indicated a willingness to participate were then provided with an information sheet, a copy of the questionnaire, and a self-sealing envelope for its return. Data from the prisoner sample were collected with the assistance of prison officers and prisoner representatives. Prisoners who had previously indicated a willingness to participate were also located and invited to participate. Participation was voluntary.
Results
A breakdown of the sample by prison and employment type (operational vs. program delivery staff) together with the mean age for prisoner and staff participants, mean sentence length (in days), and mean length of service (in days) is provided in Table 1. Chi-square goodness-of-fit analysis revealed no significant difference in the number of prisoner participants (χ2 = 1.91, p > .05) or program staff (χ2 = .25, p > .05) from the two prisons. A significant difference was noted, however, for the number of operational staff who participated in the study, with a greater number drawn from the mainstream prison, χ2 = 8.23, p < .001.
Age and Sentence Length for Prisoner Participants and Age and Length of Service for Staff Participants
Discrepancies in data are due to missing data on some variables.
Independent-samples t tests revealed no significant difference between the age of prisoners in the mainstream as compared to the therapeutic prison, t(130) = 1.01, p > .05, d = .18, and no significant difference between the groups on sentence length, t(105.81) = 1.879, p > .05, d = .31. With respect to differences in staff attributes for age and length of service, a 2 (prison) × 2 (staff type) multivariate analysis of variance revealed a main effect with a large effect size for clinical versus operational staff groups, Wilks’s λ =.90, F(2, 89) = 5.09, p < .001,
Although 40.98% (n = 109) of prisoners in the therapeutic prison were serving sentences between 1 and 3 years as compared to 34.12% (n = 232) in the mainstream prison, this was not significant, χ2 = .63, p > .05. Although a significantly greater proportion of prisoners in the therapeutic prison were serving sentences less than a year (14.66% vs. 33.97%; χ2 = 7.67, p < .01), this reflects the criteria for entry into the therapeutic prison (i.e., a minimum of 6 months to serve).
To test the hypothesis that the social climate of the two prisons would differ, independent-samples t tests were conducted to explore between-group differences on the EssenCES subscale scores for both prisoners and staff in their working environments. As shown in Table 2, although no significant between-group differences were noted on either the total EssenCES score or the subscales scores for the prisoner sample, the effect size (d = .30) indicates a trend for prisoners in the rehabilitation prison to rate the social climate more positively than their counterparts in the mainstream prison. An examination of the subscales reveals that this trend is most strongly related to the extent to which prisoner participants in the rehabilitation prison experienced perceived levels of staff interest and support (Hold and Support subscale). Staff at the therapeutic prison rated the overall social climate as significantly more positive than their counterparts from the mainstream prison. In terms of the subscales, ratings of both the level of staff interest and support for inmates (Hold and Support) and level of support and caring between prisoners (Inmates’ Social Cohesion and Mutual Support) were significantly higher for staff from the therapeutic prison.
Means, Standard Deviations, t Values, and Effect Sizes for Subscale Scores on the EssenCES for Prisoners (
Note. EssenCES = Essen Climate Evaluation Schema (Schalast, Redies, Collins, Stacey, & Howells, 2008); CI = confidence interval.
p < .05. **p <.001.
Preliminary normative data for these two Australian prison settings is provided in Table 3. These figures are based on the mean scores and standard deviations for both prison types and all staff across the two institutions. As shown, both staff and prisoners in Australia perceived their prison environment to be more cohesive, safer, and more therapeutic than those who live and work in forensic mental health services in the United Kingdom (Howells et al., 2009) and Germany (Schalast et al., 2008). Some caution should be exercised here, however, given that the services may differ in important ways (for example, a lower level of security exists in the wards from which the German data have been drawn).
Preliminary Normative Data for the EssenCES Measure in Australian Prison Setting
Note. EssenCES = Essen Climate Evaluation Schema (Schalast et al., 2008).
Only subscale scores were reported in the original study, so standard deviations for total scores are not available.
Discussion
The present study was designed to examine differences in staff and prisoner social climate perceptions from two different prisons, one that offers intensive rehabilitation programs (the therapeutic prison) and one that is less treatment oriented (the mainstream prison). Contrary to expectations, the hypothesis was only partially supported. That is, when prisoner and prison staff views are considered together, the social climate of the therapeutic prison was not rated as safer, more supportive, or more therapeutic than that of the mainstream prison. That said, the moderate effect size reported above does represent a trend for prisoners in the rehabilitation prison to report a more positive social climate than their mainstream counterparts. Given the sample size available for the study, it would be worth repeating the analyses with a larger group of prisoners.
Staff responses, on the other hand, were much more clear-cut: The therapeutic prison staff rated the overall prison social climate significantly more positively than their counterparts from the mainstream prison. Furthermore, significant between-group differences were observed on two of the three EssenCES subscales; staff at the therapeutic prison rated both the level of staff interest and support for inmates and level of support and caring between prisoners as significantly higher than did staff at the mainstream prison. These staff ratings suggest that the social climate of the therapeutic prison was perceived as more conducive to rehabilitative needs than that of a mainstream prison.
There is a need, however, to understand more about the different perspectives of prisoners and staff in these institutions, especially considering the model of change adopted in therapeutic communities that De Leon (1997) refers to as “community as method” or the “purposive use of the peer community to facilitate social and psychological change in individuals” (p. 5). This model implies that all members of the community should share the same understanding of the climate and that there is a need for staff and prisoners to share their views about institutional life and how it can either promote or inhibit behavior change. Community meetings are seen as integral to these models of rehabilitation (Day & Doyle, 2010) and are also considered to be important to the success of other specialist treatment prisons (Birgden & Grant, 2010).
There are a number of considerations, however, in the interpretation of any social climate data. The first of these relates to the extent to which the overall climate of an institution can be meaningfully assessed or whether different units within a prison have their own distinctive climate. Prisoners in the rehabilitation prison who participated in this study, for example, are accommodated in separate self-contained living areas according to their treatment needs. In other words, different parts of a prison may have different climates. Shefer (2010), for example, has commented that staff-prisoner relationships in prison therapeutic communities are more informal, friendlier, and more trusting than on mainstream wings.
A number of methodological problems could potentially influence the robustness of these findings, the most obvious of which is the self-selecting nature of the sample. It may be that those who volunteered to take part had different experiences or perceptions of the prison environment than those who did not. In addition, no attempt was made to control for socially desirable responding, and although there were no benefits to taking part in the research, it is possible that some participants may have provided ratings that did not reflect their real views. Nevertheless, the study does provide data on how different types of prison are experienced by both staff and prisoners that can be used to assess changes over time in prison regimes (for example, following the introduction of new programs or initiatives), and the measure can be used to identify aspects of the prison environment that need to be improved if rehabilitative opportunities are to be maximized. Further research in this area is, however, clearly necessary, especially in relation to the effectiveness of interventions that are intended to bring about changes in the climate of a prison wing, unit, or institution.
Finally, the normative data reported here may be particularly useful in helping to explain why some prisons perform better (or worse) than others on key performance indicators and identifying those aspects of an institution that may be countertherapeutic. What is less obvious is specifying what might be considered to be an optimal prison social climate and how this might vary across many different types of prison that currently exist. For those prisons that have adopted a specific treatment focus, however, it seems reasonable to suggest that social climates characterized by high level of social cohesion, mutual support, and safety are those that are likely to be successful in rehabilitating offenders.
Footnotes
This research was supported by a grant from the Criminology Research Council. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the council.