Improving Correctional Staff Perceptions of Organizational Justice

ABSTRACT

The current study explored how three key work environment variables – input into decision-making, instrumental communication, and perceived quality of supervision – affected views of distributive and procedural justice among correctional staff (n= 322) at an unusual Southern prison. Results supported the premise that work environment variables influence the organizational justice perceptions of correctional staff; however, the effects of work environment on organizational justice perceptions differed, as only four of the six hypotheses were supported by the multivariate regression results. Specifically, input into decision-making and quality of supervision had positive effects on both distributive and procedural justice, while instrumental communication did not have a statistically significant relationship with either. The findings indicate that correctional administrators should focus on input into decision-making and quality of supervision in order to increase staff perceptions of organizational justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Correctional staff
• organizational justice
• distributive justice
• procedural justice

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions, which improved the paper. The authors also thank Janet Lambert for editing and proofreading the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.