Learning the Ropes: The Protective Role of Mentoring in Correctional Police Officers’ Socialization Process

Abstract

Formal mentoring is an individualized and contextualized socialization tactic to enhance newcomers’ learning—acknowledged as essential in the early career stage—that can be of particular value when entering a fairly unpredictable and stressful workplace. This research aims to understand the moderating role of formal mentoring in the relationship between organizational socialization and 2 adjustment indicators, a positive 1 (commitment) and a negative 1 (turnover intention). A questionnaire was administered to 117 correctional police officer newcomers, as prisons are especially critical work contexts for newcomers. The results show a direct effect from both socialization and mentoring on commitment and turnover, and an interaction between socialization and mentoring on turnover, although not on commitment. When the socialization process progresses steadily, both socialization and mentoring contribute to good adjustment, but when traditional tactics go wrong, a different learning source (formal mentoring) exerts a protective function, limiting newcomers’ intention to quit. These findings give support to the usefulness of mentoring in a law enforcement context and provide some insight into defining formal mentoring programs.

• correctional police officers
• formal mentoring
• socialization
• affective commitment
• turnover intention

Notes

1 For the analyses of OSI total score, and the future prospect, training and coworker support, nine of the 117 participants were missing in one or more of the variables, resulting in a sample size of 108 for analysis. For the OSI understanding subscale, 11 participants were missing resulting in a total sample size of 106.

2 For the turnover intention model using OSI total score and the OSI subscales, five cases were missing for one or more of the variables, resulting in a sample size of 112 for analysis, except for the understanding subscale where the total sample size was 111.