Reasons for Faith-Based Correctional Program Participation: An Examination of Motive Types

Abstract

Although faith-based correctional programming has become increasingly popular in recent years, offenders' motivation to participate and the impact on prison adjustment have received little attention. Analyzing interview data of 83 participants of the Federal Bureau of Prison's faith-based correctional program, this study explored the different types of motives for program participation and examined their associations with prison adjustment as measured by misconduct. The results from content analysis showed that the offenders whose motives were congruent with the general goals of the program were less likely to commit misconduct before and after their program enrollment. The Prochaska scale, which measures levels of change in general, did not differ greatly with these more specific motive types. This implies that offenders' program-specific motives could be meaningfully associated with their prison adjustment.

KEYWORDS:

• faith-based program
• general change motivation
• misconduct
• motive types
• prison adjustment
• program-specific variables

Notes

^a Numbers of program participants in age, sex, and race variables included both survey participants and nonsurvey participants. The number of program participants in these variables thus ranges from 1,354 to 1,359.

^a Unit of analysis: responses provided by interviewees.

Note. LCP = Life Connections Program.

^a Only survey participants were given the Prochaska motivation questions. As a result, the numbers of LCP participants (n = 774), nonparticipants (n = 1,105), and interviewees (n = 71) for average Prochaska motivation scores differ from those for average misconduct counts. The unit of analysis in this table is individual respondents. Average days inmates spent in prisons from their beginning of current sentence to their LCP enrollment were 1,368, while average days they spent in prisons from LCP enrollment to the last day of data collection (May 7, 2007) were 811.

*p < .05. **p < .001.

The BOP introduced a 6th grade mandatory literacy standard in 1982 and increased the standard to 12th grade level in 1990.

The Prochaska scale was developed by J. Prochaska and C. DiClemente in the 1980s to measure stages of motivation for behavioral change for people who have addiction issues (smoking). It has often been used for community-based program evaluations, not prison-based ones. The scale measures program participants' level of personal change progress (or motivation). Information for personal change motivation is acquired through a designed questionnaire. While the questions can be used to measure the stages of contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance (Prochaska et al., 1992, 1988, 1986), use of the items at the BOP has been focused on overall change motivation using all questions. (Two more stages—precontemplation and termination—were added to this categorization later). Out of 32 questions we adopted from the Prochaska questionnaire, each set of eight questions specifically focuses on certain mental characteristics associated with certain motivational stages. If a survey participant shows a high scale score on one particular stage of motivation, e.g., preparation, researchers categorize the participant's motivational stage accordingly. We adopted the Prochaska scale in order to measure LCP participants' general change motivation level, not to measure their motivational stages. Instead of using the average scores of each motivational stage, thus, we used the grand average score of the scale by combining scores of each motivational item and dividing them by the number of items.

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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of either the Federal Bureau of Prisons or the U.S. Department of Justice.