Criminal Justice and Behavior

Mental health efforts in prisons and jails most often ignore the mental illness prevention capabilities of main-line correctional personnel. By focusing on inmates with drug dependencies or severe psychiatric disorders, traditional mental health services have failed to come to grips with the problems created for “normal inmates” by the conditions of confinement. This article argues that indigenous correctional personnel might supplement the efforts of professional treatment staff by learning to assist inmates in coping with the stress produced by everyday institutional living conditions.

The mental health status of a group of 486 admissions to the Philadelphia Prisons was systematically examined in a carefully controlled study using multiple indices of psychopathology. In addition to measures of psychopathology, demographic information and descriptive personality and intelligence data were collected on all subjects. Subsets of subjects also received individual psychiatric interviews and psychological evaluations. The results indicate that approximately two-thirds of the subjects were identifiable by relatively stringent criteria as being psychiatrically disturbed and in need of specific mental health treatment services, and 34% were identifiable by all indicators of psychopathology used. Furthermore, 11% were in need of immediate inpatient psychiatric hospital care. Implications for treatment planning in correctional service settings are discussed.

This study established a current average national estimate of the prevalence of mental retardation among state prison inmates, and gathered information regarding their adjustment to incarceration and rehabilitative services provided them. It was determined that an average of 2% or about 7,600 inmates are mentally retarded, and that the number presently confined in all types of correctional settings is approximately 12,640. That relatively low figure was attributed to the emergence of various diversion processes and improved psychometric practice, and it was expected that these ongoing trends would reduce this prevalence rate even further in the future. It was also concluded that the mentally retarded do not adjust well to prison life, and that the mentally retarded do not adjust well to prison life, and that supplemental rehabilitation services for them at those sites had not expanded appreciably over the past two decades.

An inmate counterculture presents a barrier to the institutional goal of long-term reform. If the counterculture is a reaction to deprivations caused by incarceration, increasing autonomy would help co-opt the counterculture to cooperation with the institutional program. Data concerning autonomy for inmates and their adaptation to incarceration were collected from over 400 residents and 160 staff members at institutions for juvenile offenders. The research design avoided confounding autonomy with inmate characteristics and institutional setting, and included a broad range of measures of inmates' adaptation. Inmate reports of greater autonomy were associated with adaptations that were considerably more favorable to institutional goals. There was little relationship between staff reports of autonomy and either inmate reports of autonomy or inmate adaptation. This can be explained by a lack of variance in staff perceptions of groups, meaning that staff members failed to discriminate differences that were substantial in the eyes of inmates.

Data are presented from a sample of almost 1000 probation and parole workers concerning job burnout, as measured by one currently accepted indicator. The problem was not as extensive as some popular accounts have implied, but a sizable proportion of the sample did report experiencing the difficulty. Findings on the levels of burnout at different seniority levels suggest that burnout is worst for employees past their initial period of employment and lowest for the newly hired and for the most experienced. Intervention implications based on this preliminary analysis include attention to consciousness raising, orientation program development, and utilization of more experienced probation officers as mentors.

Three major areas of stress, Physical/Psychological Threat, Evaluation Systems, and Lack of Support were identified in police officers via factor analysis. These were related to bureau, age, years on the job, and race. Results were discussed in terms of an expanded model of police stress, incorporating role with the variable of time.